


somewhere between paranoia and the giant pigeon

by suheafoams



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alpha Jongin, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Character Study, Happy Ending, M/M, Mates, Omega Joonmyun, Richboy!Jongin, Rimming, Some angst, one night stand turned relationship, or a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 08:06:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7500576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suheafoams/pseuds/suheafoams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jongin thinks that Joonmyun has spent so much time in his little greenhouse heart, he's forgotten the sun will never shine any brighter or warmer unless he gathers the courage to take a step outside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	somewhere between paranoia and the giant pigeon

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'ed, hope u like  
> a little winding story about taking risks, learning to be honest, and having faith  
> (in shorter words... rich alpha jongin learning how to court wild child omega joonmyun)  
> i started out with the intention to write a much shorter story about.....one night stands → FwB → mates in ABO/omegaverse but that plan veered off the path and dropped right into the bottom of the ocean /sweats nervously  
> as a result this didn't turn out to be...exactly the typical abo dynamics fic?? it is not sex heavy, and it came out with a lot more focus on feelings, the idea of consent, etc. etc. ^^''

“He left me,” Jongin whines into the phone. Sehun only groans in response, presumably still in bed when Jongin calls him for the fifth time. There’s the sound of sheets rustling in the background. 

“Jongin, it’s like 9 in the morning and I came home from a photoshoot at 4 am,” Sehun barks. “Who are you crying about so early in the morning?”   

 “The guy I brought home last night,” Jongin tries to reign in the hysterical tone of his voice. “He smelled so-”

 “I’m not sure I should or want to hear the rest of that,” Sehun says, in warning. “What? Did he smell like spicy flowers and the bloom of raging hormones in spring?” He starts to cackle, but sobers up quickly.

 Jongin sighs. Going into unnecessary details will only make Sehun laugh at him, so he just says, “He smelled like mate material.”

He receives a lengthy silence in response. It must be shocking to hear, considering Sehun rarely sacrifices any opportunity to insult some aspect of Jongin’s personality or intellectual capacity. Jongin examines the loose thread in his comforter. Then, “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” Jongin says. “Usually, I don’t get too attached to omegas, but for some reason, waking up alone today made me feel…really bad?” The shock had been like a bad scab, that hadn’t healed quite a hundred percent and got ripped off before he was ready for it.  

“So descriptive,” Sehun says. “Do you at least have his number? Name?”

 Looking around, Jongin sees nothing but his own clothes on the floor, which is to be expected. The guy had booked it out of there before Jongin had come even close to waking up, and there’s no note on Jongin’s dresser. Obviously, he hadn’t been overly keen to come back or keep in touch.

 “Joonmyun,” Jongin says absently, remembering their conversation in the bar before he suggested they take it somewhere else. “He said he works as a magazine editor? I think he’s older than me.”

A cunning smile, sweetly curved eyes with a hint of ferocity in them. Jongin had been careless and gotten sucked in, then spit right back out. He doesn’t know how to feel, because this is the first time he’s been on the receiving end of a cold shoulder.   

“Really?” Sehun makes a thoughtful noise. “Maybe he works at my mom’s company. You want me to check for you?”

“If it involves printing my face and name on a banner with the fact that I’m looking for him, then no,” Jongin says, feeling wary of Sehun’s tendencies to get up to no good under the disguise of offering assistance.

“I know I’ve done somewhat questionable things in the past,” Sehun says, laughing when Jongin scoffs at the very diluted truth of that statement. “But don’t worry. This is mate stuff. You know I won’t mess around with that, especially if it’s you. I’ll just inquire quietly, okay?”

Jongin rubs at the inner corner of his eye. “Yes, that would be good. Thank you.”

 

+

 

Sehun grins and waves a post it note as he approaches the table Jongin’s sitting at. “I found him!” In college, they’d gotten into the habit of having lunch together at least once every two weeks, and the routine stuck even after they graduated. Sehun says, “Turns out he does work at my mom’s company. He’s deputy editor for DELIRIUM. Pretty high position for someone so young.”

“How could I live without you, Sehun?” Jongin takes the note carefully and reads the contact information, slipping it into his wallet for later reference. It puts him at ease to know that he at least has some strings to grasp now. “Thank you, for doing this.”  

“Anything for my emotionally stunted Jonginnie.” Jongin scrunches his nose long enough that Sehun is sure to have seen it, but Sehun ignores him and pretends he’s looking in a different direction. “It might be a little tough for you, though. I heard he’s a monster in his work and doesn’t date,” Sehun says. “He must be one of those omegas that eats betas for breakfast and alphas for dinner.”

Jongin grows nervous at the thought of Joonmyun being hard to approach. Most omegas he’s dealt with are more than willing to get more time with him, because for them, it means connections and that many more expensive gifts in their pockets.

On second thought, it might be nice if Joonmyun doesn’t hold that expectation over him. He’s been taken advantage of enough times that he can tell what motives someone has just from the way they shift their body weight or the way they blink up at him with false sincerity. “How can he not want to date even after meeting me?” he asks, fluttering his eyelashes.

Sehun snorts. “You know, some people require more than looks and eager puppy yips in a relationship. Sometimes they want maturity, intelligence...oh I don’t know...an adult?” Like he’s giving a presentation of pros and cons, he holds out another finger on his right hand and taps it with the index finger of his left every time he mentions a new trait.  

“Shut up,” Jongin says, lightly hitting Sehun, but he ends up getting more air than arm because Sehun ducks out of the way.   

“But in truth, you guys just slept together once, right? Realistically, I don’t think he had anything in mind besides wanting an alpha to fuck around with.”

“But couldn’t he smell me?” Jongin asks, and frowns. Attraction between two scents is usually mutual, but Joonmyun didn’t make any comment on it. Jongin hadn’t expected him to, at that moment, but he’d thought they might be able to discuss it in the morning. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“A lot of people don’t believe in traditional mating anymore, even if it’s natural for us to meet particular individuals that we want to bond with immediately,” Sehun says. “You should be prepared to take the hit if he says he’s not looking for a relationship, from what I gathered on him.”

“Yeah,” Jongin says. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

 

+

 

After Jongin double checks that he’s typed the right number into the keypad, he presses call and waits anxiously. Joonmyun sounds apprehensive when he answers. “Hello?”

His voice is so pleasing, even through the phone. “Hi, this is Jongin,” Jongin starts. “We met up a few days ago? I don’t know if you remember me, but…”

The noise to signal the call has ended startles Jongin. He looks at his phone incredulously to confirm if he actually heard it, and to his dismay, Joonmyun really has ended the call. Jongin calls again, and it goes to voicemail after several rings.

He tries calling after waiting a few more minutes, but to no avail. Joonmyun won’t pick up. “What,” Jongin whines to himself. “I didn’t even - ugh.”

 

+

 

Standing outside the ZAP building, Jongin thinks about Sehun’s advice, and how he’s not taking it. 

( _“I’m telling you, if he ended the call like that, it means he’s not interested. I don’t think you should go find him in person. Are you listening to me? Jongin. Jongin!”_ )

 _It’ll be alright_ , Jongin tells himself, and hopes that he at least gets in a few words this time besides hello and his name. He straightens out his jacket and pulls the door open, walking until he reaches the counter in front of the receptionist. 

“Hi, how may I help you?” she asks cheerfully, after he hovers for a few seconds.

“I’m looking for a Kim Joonmyun, deputy editor of DELIRIUM?” Jongin asks.

“The DELIRIUM team is on the third floor. Joonmyun-ssi should still be here but I’m not sure if he’s busy right now. To reach his office, turn right when you come out of the elevator and there should be a door with his name on it.”

“Ah yes, thank you,” Jongin says, and heads for the hallway she points to, where the elevators are located.

It’s a relief when he knocks on the door of Joonmyun’s office and hears the familiar voice call out, “Come in.” It’s not as much of a relief when he sees Joonmyun visibly pale at the sight of him. However, Jongin has prepared himself for this type of reaction and reminds himself that his strength must remain unwavering.

“Jongin-ssi,” Joonmyun says, stiffly. “Why are you here?”

“You didn’t answer my calls,” Jongin replies. Evidently, Joonmyun is much friendlier at nighttime. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

Joonmyun’s eyes narrow. “My phone wasn’t broken, in case you were wondering,” he says, after a few seconds. “You should be smart enough to take the hint?”

 _Monster indeed_ , Jongin thinks in his poor, puppy fried brain. _Maybe Sehun was right._ Even so, he gathers enough courage to say, “I don’t think it’s fair that you ended the call without even listening to me once.”

Joonmyun is about to answer, but his attention is shifted to something behind Jongin, and Jongin turns to find a girl at the door. “Sunbae, I have the documents ready for you.” She’s looking at Jongin curiously, which seems to make Joonmyun highly uncomfortable.

“Thank you, just bring them here,” Joonmyun says, movements becoming jittery. The girl comes in, sets the papers down, and then promptly leaves. He fidgets until she’s completely out of hearing range, and then he looks back at Jongin with a steel like stare. “It may have been rude of me to not return your phone calls, but I find it unnerving that you tracked me down at my workplace. Even if it isn’t totally private information, it’s a little invasive.”

“I’m sorry. I was desperate, and asked my friend to check if you worked at his mother’s company,” Jongin says, earnestly. “You left so early. I still have things to say.” He can hear Joonmyun’s heartbeat speed up, now that he’s hinted at their night together. Whether it’s out of fear or other...emotions, he can’t determine yet.

“Yes, I…” Joonmyun’s eyebrows pinch together. He looks past Jongin again. “Can we talk about this somewhere else?”

“Are you going to see me later if we don’t talk right now?” Jongin asks, seeing through Joonmyun’s attempt to escape. Joonmyun looks miserable, like he’s ready to bolt any second, and he runs his hand through his hair.

“I’m not interested in whatever you might have had in mind,” Joonmyun says, gently. “It was nice, but I assure you, there are plenty of people who would be a better-”

“You smell like you’re mine!” Jongin interrupts. “Didn’t you smell it, too?” Not the most graceful way to bring the mating thing up, but Joonmyun seems to have the type of personality where he tries to talk himself out of a crisis by doggedly bulldozing the other person out of the conversation.  

There are an endless number of instances where Jongin has let himself get talked into something he didn’t want, but this time, he won’t be talked out of something he _does_ want.

Joonmyun’s eyes widen, and then he sighs in resignation. “Would you keep your voice down,” he groans. “Jongin-ssi, how about we meet up after I get off work and talk more? I don’t think this is an appropriate place to discuss your current concerns.”

“When will you get off work?” Jongin asks.

“In two hours,” Joonmyun says, looking at the clock. “You can meet me at 7 at…” he takes his notepad and writes something on it, handing the slip of paper to Jongin after he rips it off the binding. “...this location.”

“If you don’t come,” Jongin threatens. “I’m going to come here again, and I won’t leave.”

“Yes, yes,” Joonmyun says, waving his hand in dismissal. “Now get out.”

 

+

 

Joonmyun sits down across from Jongin in the corner of an obscure cafe a few blocks from where ZAP is, taking his sunglasses off and setting them on the table. Jongin can see why Joonmyun chose this place. There aren’t very many customers, no extra eyes and ears to see or hear whatever Joonmyun’s afraid of. Because they’re sitting so close to each other now, Jongin notes how sweet Joonmyun’s facial features are, when they’re not crinkled in irritation. “What is it you were saying? I smell like I’m yours?” he asks Jongin.

“You smell like my mate,” Jongin says, decisively, and Joonmyun chuckles. It doesn’t sound promising, more hollow and amused. His fingers tap on the table impatiently.

“And what does that have to do with me?” he asks, pretending to be dense, but his scent radiates anxiety. It leaves a sharper presence than when he was in his office.

Jongin wants to deflate and just zoom home like a squeaking, popped balloon, but the possibility of seeing Joonmyun again and more regularly, as well as Joonmyun’s contradicting words and smell, is enough to keep him going. “Well, I was hoping we could date. 

“Hope no more, Jongin-ssi,” Joonmyun replies, curt. His manners are crisp and folded, like he’s packaged them to come out perfectly, without any bumps or wrinkles. “I already said I’m not interested in a relationship. Consider this a polite rejection.” Despite his cutting tone, there’s a new addition to his current emotion. Jongin smells lust, along with concentrated fear. He can’t imagine why the man would be feeling both.

“I would accept your rejection,” Jongin says, as Joonmyun takes his sunglasses and stands up, “if you didn’t smell like you wanted me, too.” This causes Joonmyun to freeze.

“I don’t believe in biological tendencies,” Joonmyun answers. “Although my body may be interested in you, it matters more that my mind is not.”

“But it’s part of our nature, you can’t just ignore our compatibility,” Jongin protests.

“We are living in the 21st century, Jongin-ssi. Physical attraction and scent compatibility only account for 50% of the success in a relationship, and I’m not interested in a relationship,” Joonmyun says angrily. The sour scent of anxiety grows stronger, and his heartbeat intensifies, although his facial expression reveals nothing.

“Why are you so scared?” Jongin asks. “You don’t think I’m going to hurt you, do you?”

“How would I know?” Joonmyun says, bitingly. “Alphas think they’re entitled to everything and don’t know what ‘no’ means even if they’re hit in the face with it.”

With omegas and betas falling as his feet from the day he became sexually mature, Jongin has never thought about what it felt like for unwilling omegas. When Joonmyun says it like that, though, he understands.

Not every alpha is dominant and overbearing, but there are enough of the arrogant ones that it’s a concern for omegas when they’re approached by alphas, since they’re more inclined to follow the alpha’s wishes even if it’s against their own. Even if some omegas have the willpower and strength to go against alphas, there’s still a widespread fear for safety because an alpha that snaps is an alpha that’s hard to hold back.

Jongin hasn’t touched Joonmyun or made any move to touch him, but Joonmyun’s discomfort continues to roll out in overwhelming waves. For him to react so strongly towards Jongin’s slight persistence means that someone had to have been… very aggressive with him in the past. 

Jongin can be emotionally inept at times, but he’s not blind to real fear, and once he realizes the severity of Joonmyun’s, he backs off. “You must have gone through a lot,” he says, scratching his neck awkwardly. “I, um. Sorry for pushing you.”  

Joonmyun glances at him as if to check whether it was actually Jongin talking, but he seems to calm down at the words. His heartbeat eases off the gas pedal, slowing to a normal speed. “It’s fine.” His lips are set in a tense line. Jongin wants to hold his hand to comfort him, but he doesn’t think Joonmyun would take it very well.  

Instead, he asks, “Do you have a drink you like?”

“Americano.” Joonmyun’s answer is instant. “But buying me a drink won’t get you anywhere.”

“I know,” Jongin says, taking his wallet out of his back pocket. “Just think of it as an apology for making you uncomfortable.”

Joonmyun accepts the drink when Jongin holds it out to him. “Thank you,” he says, and Jongin can no longer smell any uneasiness on him.

 

+

 

Jongin knows he’s only going to get a hairy eyeball for complaining about his Joonmyun woes, but he goes to Sehun anyways because no one else manages to pull off as odd a mixture of indifference and undivided attention as his best friend does.

“What did I tell you?” Sehun says, in his know-it-all tone, while his eyes remain glued to his phone. Jongin wants to shove him off the bed. He’s probably playing some dumb game, like Candy Crush while knowing exactly what Jongin’s said because he’s a good listener. “Now you went and pissed him off.”

“It’s not like I’m going to see him again,” Jongin says. After a pause, he whines, “But he smelled so nice. I can’t believe this.”

“Don’t worry,” Sehun says, and it’s meant to be reassuring, but the most sincere of Sehun’s emotions still comes across as mocking even when he’s not trying. “I’m sure your good looks and captivating personality will get you a mate in no time.”

“I don’t want just anyone, I want Joonmyun! You say that like mates are just oranges you can go to the orchard and collect in baskets,” Jongin barks, but his face is mashed into his pillow so the intended effect and volume are lost. The yell turns into a whimper as he fully processes his own disappointment.

When Joonmyun wasn’t feeling anxious, he smelled cozy. Like a blanket Jongin wanted to curl up in and never leave. But claiming a mate doesn’t work unless it’s wanted from both sides, and apparently Jongin’s scent hadn’t been enough to send Joonmyun reeling in layers of pre-developmental-love. And he definitely wasn’t going to push Joonmyun past appropriate boundaries and get him freaked out again.

“Move on. From what you said, it seems like he has a lot of secret baggage anyways,” Sehun advises. “Not suitable for someone like you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jongin asks.

“Don’t get me wrong, Jongin, you’re fun to be around,” Sehun says. He puts down his phone. “But you don’t really like taking care of people or sharing their emotional burdens. That sort of stuff always scares you off.”

Sehun isn’t wrong. After years of being approached for his family’s wealth and his status as an alpha, Jongin doesn’t like to dwell on the deeper, darker faces behind the people he interacts with. He’s learned through experience to offer only the outer half of himself, because it’s enough to give people what they want but not too much to make them become disillusioned.

It’s refreshing to meet someone like Joonmyun, who’s unaware of his background and doesn’t bother to spare him a second glance. Jongin thinks he would like to take care of Joonmyun one day, if Joonmyun would let him.

“I don’t mind taking care of people,” Jongin says. “I just don’t like listening to perpetual whining and crying.”

“Unfortunately, Jongin, sometimes those two overlap,” says Sehun. “Anyways, just sleep with someone else. Are you forgetting your nickname from university? _Kim Jongin, Slayer of Hoes_ and _Bros—_ ”

“Shut up! That was in the past,” Jongin protests. He’s done his best to erase every memory of his casual sex adventures from college, and he doesn’t need Sehun undoing all that hard work. “I don’t play around that much anymore.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sehun says, with a tone that Jongin knows is meant to be sarcastic. “Anyway, you know what I’m trying to say.”

Jongin sighs. He thinks about the smile Joonmyun had given him in the dark and tries not to feel empty because of something he’s never had.

 

+

 

Jongin does go back to clubbing. After all, it’s in his nature to want nighttime playmates, but for some reason, he never really wants to take anyone home. He does it occasionally to see if going through the motions will turn him back into the playboy Jongin who never had any worries, but it’s a lost cause. Joonmyun has left an oddly shaped hole in his heart despite them being barely more than strangers. Although he doesn’t think it’s love, there’s an unmistakable ache in him to see Joonmyun all the time. It doesn’t matter if his feelings won’t be reciprocated.

Jongin swirls the contents of his glass around in a weak attempt to create an alcohol tornado. He rarely gets drunk unless it’s with Sehun for a celebration. Drinking is generally more for looks than his own pleasure, and to keep up pretenses in a society that still has humans.  

“Alone?” Jongin looks up to see a man with colored hair, round eyes, and thick lips pulled into an attractive smile. He’s a beta. 

Jongin’s about to give a reply in the affirmative, but he’s interrupted by someone else speaking. “No. He’s with me.” The voice makes Jongin whip his head around.

Jongin stares at Joonmyun in disbelief as the first guy apologizes with “Didn’t mean to intrude,” and removes himself from the scene without further conflict. Jongin hasn’t noticed it until now, but for an omega, whose height can’t be described as more than ordinary, Joonmyun has a presence so forceful that it has people scrambling to obey him willingly.

“Joonmyun-ssi,” Jongin says, and tries to control his inner wolf from taking over and jumping the man standing in front of him. “Why…?”

“You don’t like that I’m here?” Joonmyun asks, knowing full well what Jongin’s answer is. His fingers curl around Jongin’s neck, a hint of possessiveness, and they leave a burning sensation along the skin even though his touch is delicate.

“It’s not like that,” Jongin huffs, making Joonmyun chuckle. Joonmyun’s stare is unnerving; Jongin can smell the lust under all the cologne, and it makes him want to rub his face all over Joonmyun’s neck.

“Are you gonna keep staring at me like I’m a ghost, or are you gonna take me home?” The smile Joonmyun gives Jongin is small, but it promises so many things, and Jongin wants all of them.

“I thought,” he breathes out, in between Joonmyun’s peppering of kisses down his neck, “that you weren’t interested...in a relationship?”

He had nearly exploded into irreplaceable debris with Joonmyun tucked next to him in the taxi ride back to his apartment, and they’d started prying at each other’s clothes as soon as the door to his apartment was closed. He doesn’t know what to think of Joonmyun’s supposed rejection when he’s currently straddling Jongin, after very intentionally stealing him away from a potential bed partner.

“I’m not,” Joonmyun says. Jongin’s heart gets ready to crumble again. “However, sex with you is good, and I like your personality.”

“You do?” Jongin says, hating the way his voice squeaks whenever he seeks reassurance.

Joonmyun laughs. Casually grinds against Jongin while his eyes curl into attractive crescents. Scrunched lines gather on the sides, and Jongin reaches up to touch, gently, with his thumbs. Joonmyun says, “I don’t say things twice. I did think about how you reacted a few days ago, and I appreciate you respecting my feelings. There are so few people who do it, nowadays.”

Jongin hums in response because it’s too much work to try and form coherent sentences when Joonmyun is rolling his hips against Jongin’s without mercy.

“You shouldn’t misunderstand me, though,” Joonmyun says seriously. “When I say no, I mean no. I didn’t play hard to get.”

“Is that a yes to the dating?" 

“Not so sure about that,” Joonmyun says. “I’m not into being dominated and being told what to do all the time. I hate being controlled.” Part of the arousal in his scent changes to anxiety. It’s sour, and sharp, and Jongin doesn’t know what happened in Joonmyun’s last relationship, but he knows for certain it left broken shards and burnt bridges in its wake.

Jongin is quiet as he says, “I wouldn’t. You know that.”

“Do I?” Joonmyun’s smile disappears, fades into a wry quirk of the lips that looks more like his default expression when he isn’t betraying anything under the surface. “Nevermind, let’s just…” he struggles to finish the sentence, and Jongin lets him trail off without asking any more questions, kissing Joonmyun when he closes his eyes.

 

+

 

Joonmyun says he doesn’t want a relationship. He says it multiple times just to hammer the concept through Jongin’s head, but in Jongin’s honest opinion, his actions send a fairly different message. Just when Jongin is half dozing off, Joonmyun will let his guard down and lightly trace his fingers over the sharpest edges of Jongin’s face, kissing his forehead after he thinks Jongin has fallen asleep.

Jongin doesn’t want to push Joonmyun in a corner, but surely, he can lure him out of it.  

 

+

 

They fall into a pattern. Well traced, and more familiar as time passes. It’s always Jongin’s place. Joonmyun never stays over after sex. Like clockwork, he’ll leave, either right after they finish or when Jongin is still sleeping deeply.  

Jongin doesn’t know whether they’re exclusive, doesn’t really force Joonmyun to define things since it’s what he seems to avoid and steer clear of. It’s easier this way, to say and ask for nothing, because Jongin isn’t sure how well he would take it if Joonmyun were to actually tell him he was sleeping with other people. Joonmyun is straightforward with his words, but he’s not careless. He makes sure to never smell like any other alpha or beta in Jongin’s presence, and Jongin can’t pick out anything specific on the days where they haven’t seen each other in a while.  

Sometimes he finds Joonmyun in the same club, and he can never tell whether the older man is waiting for him to come or meeting him accidentally.

(Several times in one week, Jongin realizes, when he sees Joonmyun sitting at a booth for the third time in four days, dark eyes on him, is no longer just a coincidence.)

At 4:38 AM, Joonmyun is preparing to leave. Jongin knows this because he takes the chance to eye his alarm clock just as Joonmyun’s back is turned to him. Joonmyun has already pulled everything on, including his socks, but he startles when Jongin speaks. “Don’t go,” Jongin’s voice is thick from sleep. Even then, he’s awake enough that he can hear Joonmyun’s heartbeat speed up at his plea, and he abuses his power a little harder. “I get lonely.”

A stutter in pace. Joonmyun shifts his weight from one leg to the other. “I have work.”

“Not right now.”

Even in the darkness, Jongin can see the shuddering sigh that leaves Joonmyun. “No, but I should get home.”

“What can I do to make you stay?” Jongin asks, sitting up and throwing the comforter to the side. He’s not completely naked. He has sweatpants on, but Joonmyun averts his eyes anyway. There’s an uncomfortable silence lingering in the air between them, where Joonmyun’s unexpressed fears are swimming in deep waters, circling him like a shark honing in around their prey.

“Don’t place me in a box,” Joonmyun whispers. “I’m mine first before I’m yours.”

“Of course,” Jongin answers, and _means_ it.

 

+

 

Strangely, something changes after that.

Joonmyun has become… more honest at night. He’ll actively seek out Jongin, tell Jongin what he likes about him, and reveal tidbits here and there about himself when they’re spent and exhausted after sex. Jongin learns that Joonmyun majored in creative writing and media studies, that he has an older brother, and that he’s from Busan, where his parents live now. If Joonmyun’s in one of his more patient moods, he’ll answer questions as long as they’re not too nosy.

(However, there was one time when Joonmyun completely shut down without any forewarning. Jongin had seen a scar on Joonmyun’s hand, about an inch long and slightly rougher in texture than the rest of his skin, and asked where Joonmyun got it from. Joonmyun had fallen silent for long enough that Jongin was considering apologizing for overstepping his boundaries, but right before he spoke, Joonmyun had just said, “An accident.” He couldn’t seem to focus very well on the conversation, or anything else, really, after that.)  

Day time Joonmyun is just as straightforward as night time Joonmyun...but in a different way. Joonmyun during the day is focused, logical, and mostly disinterested in Jongin. He ignores biological reactions, clamps down on the wolf lurking between his blood and skin, and doesn’t believe in mates like Jongin does. His emotions are muted down because he prevents them from pervading his normal scent. When the sun is out, he rejects Jongin as quickly as he runs to him in the evenings, face flushed and eyes shining with want.    

Jongin thinks _mine, mine, mine_ each and every moment that Joonmyun is comfortable enough to fall asleep against his chest, and wonders why Joonmyun is so against being Jongin’s one and only if it just means that Jongin becomes entirely his, too.

 

+

 

His phone rings while he’s lying face down on his bed, and Jongin turns his head to the right so he can see where it is on the dresser.

Caller ID says it’s Joonmyun, which is strange, since Joonmyun has never called him during the day before. He slides his index finger across the screen to answer the call. “Hello?”  

“Are you busy?” Joonmyun asks.

Jongin glances at his desk, with sketches and notes piled precariously into an unstable looking stack of paper. His initial design for a new project is due in a few days, but he's exhausted from working on it for hours. After a slight pause, he replies, “Not particularly. Why?”

“If you’re busy, it’s fine,” Joonmyun says. “I was just –” He trails off.

“I’ve been lying on my bed being useless. I was working on something, but I’ve been doing that for hours and now I’d like a break,” Jongin says firmly, hoping that Joonmyun will understand that it’s fine to ask for what he wants. He hears a small noise of surprise from Joonmyun in the background.

“Would you be interested in an exhibition, then?” Joonmyun asks. He says it very carefully, like he’s bracing himself for Jongin to say no, and Jongin wonders what Joonmyun’s face must look like right now if he sounds so nervous. “I received two tickets from a friend. Only fifteen people are allowed inside at a time.”

“What is it called?”

“It’s _The Paranoid Zone_ at MMCA,” Joonmyun says. “It’s a group collaboration with several artists on the topic of paranoia, and the artists are all active in music, film, performance and stage design.”

“Sounds interesting,” Jongin says. “I can come pick you up in fifteen minutes?”

“Travelling by subway is probably easier,” Joonmyun suggests. “You can leave your car at my place, if you want to go there together.”

Joonmyun is ready by the time Jongin knocks on his door, dressed in a black flannel shirt and black jeans, hair product-free. It’s soft looking. Jongin wants to confirm how soft it is with his hands, because he’s never seen a Joonmyun with hair purposefully left down and not gelled. Then he realizes, they’ve never seen each other on the weekends, only on weekday evenings when Joonmyun’s finished with work and wanting sexual fulfillment.

It’s… intimate, even if Joonmyun doesn’t seem to think that way.  

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Joonmyun asks, leaving Jongin in the doorway for a few seconds while he goes to grab his keys off the table. “Your heart is beating really fast…?”

“You look different. You’re…” _handsome,_ Jongin wants to say, but he searches instead for a positive word that’s neutral enough to not gross Joonmyun out. “It’s nice.”

“Thanks,” Joonmyun says, smiling briefly. Jongin wants to take that smile and smother himself in it. It would be a worthy death.  

“So which friend gave you the tickets?” Jongin asks, when they get off at Gwanghwamun station and start walking towards Exit 2 

“What?” Joonmyun’s face is blank, eyes unmoving.

“You said a friend gave you two tickets to see the exhibition when you called me,” Jongin reminds him. “Or am I wrong?”

The gears in Joonmyun’s brain seemed to have clicked into the right spots, breathing movement back into his facial features. “Oh, yes,” he says. “It was Yixing.”

“I see,” Jongin says, pronouncing the name mentally. “He’s Chinese?”

“Yes.” Joonmyun licks his lips. He looks like he might want to say more, but he’s interrupted by the arrival of their bus. The large vehicle comes to a screech-like stop, sighing as its doors open loudly, and Joonmyun ushers Jongin on with him. They find empty spots in the back, and sit down.

In the rush to get seated before the bus starts moving, Jongin accidentally jostles Joonmyun as he sits down beside him. Joonmyun jerks his thigh away when he realizes it’s touching Jongin’s, and he turns his head to look out the window, ears red.

A few minutes later, though, Jongin starts to feel Joonmyun lean towards him and into his space. He’s dozing off, head rolling around at a right angle which would be uncomfortable if he was awake. Jongin scoots closer and gently lifts Joonmyun’s head up, then back down once he’s done adjusting so that the crook of Joonmyun’s neck can align easily with his own shoulder. Still asleep, Joonmyun shifts, snuggling his head towards Jongin. His hair brushes against Jongin’s cheek, and Jongin reaches over, tentatively, to feel the strands in between his fingers.

To his delight, it _is_ soft. 

About a minute before they’re going to reach the stop they need to get off at, Jongin nudges Joonmyun into consciousness, and Joonmyun is totally disoriented, rubbing his eyes to wake himself up. “Do you always sleep like this on public transportation?” Jongin teases. “We might have missed it if you didn’t tell me what our stop was beforehand.”

Probably too sleepy to fight back with his usual ferocity, Joonmyun just mumbles something incomprehensible and walks toward the front of the bus when they reach their stop. They take turns laying their T-money cards flat across the scanning machine and get off the bus.

“There are four zones in this collaboration exploring the various layers of paranoia. It’s supposed to give spectators an ongoing sense of conflict between ‘consistency and disjunction,’” Joonmyun explains in a whisper, right before they enter with the other thirteen people. He’s wide awake now after their short walk from the bus stop, clearly excited.

The first zone is filled with glass-like, transparent walls with vertical ridges, all of the edges either exactly parallel or perpendicular to each other at various distances. Some of them have images projected onto them. Rain drops on soil. Grainy veins on the back of a leaf. The source of light is hard to decipher as they walk through it, subdued colors continuously rotating through faded greens, blues, pinks, yellows. Jongin has always thought of himself as a slow museum browser, but for the first time, he feels safe to take his time looking with Joonmyun, who is deeply engrossed in all aspects of the installation and even slower than him.

The second zone is completely different from the first one. Long strips of black film hang in thick, consuming clusters from the ceiling with a small amount of light illuminating the film and spaces in between. Jongin feels claustrophobic, walking in between the narrow walls and hearing murmuring sounds play with the black and white videos on both sides. It’s creepy, but at the same time, it’s eerily beautiful. If paranoia were to be visualized into a tangible object or space, this would be it.  

A hand slots itself into Jongin’s, and he turns his head to look at Joonmyun, surprised. “What?”

“Nothing,” Joonmyun says. His eyes are directed towards the black strips. Jongin hears his heartbeat, the usual, steady _thump, thump, thump_ turn into a rushed drumming, like feet pounding cross pavement to run away from a larger something rapidly approaching.

“You feeling okay?” Jongin asks in concern.

Joonmyun squeezes their hands together, and it takes about half a minute before his heartrate starts to return to normal. “Yeah. Just…thinking,” he says. “Dalparan and Kim Sejin will start a performance in here half an hour from now, at 4 pm.”

“You want to watch it?” Jongin asks, and Joonmyun’s eyes light up.

He wasn’t aware, before this, that Joonmyun could ever look so happy. It’s like Jongin’s playing a hard game and managed to unlock a secret level that no one else knows about.

Joonmyun asks, “Would you be willing to stay for that long?”

“Sure,” Jongin says. “There are other exhibitions we can pop into while we wait if we finish this one early.”

Joonmyun turns away from him, small mouth still pulled into a smile that runs from ear to ear as they continue walking, and Jongin’s eyes are burning from the radiance.

In the third zone, there’s a high ceiling and much brighter colors. A very large, very intricate pigeon sculpture sits in the center, rotating, every new angle bringing a different shadow and experience on the white walls of the room. At one point, the rainbow like colors are replaced by a dark and grainy widescreen image, cut in half by the corner of the room. A man leans towards the window, and the placement of his legs and feet make it look like he’s a reflection of the bird.

The exit to the third zone leads straight into the fourth, which is a long corridor with simply a projection of vaporization playing on the farthest wall, liquids swirling lazily and disappearing up into smoke. Even in the dim room, Jongin can see how bright and focused Joonmyun’s eyes are when he’s looking at the screen, interest piqued.

Leaning in close so he can speak without disturbing the people standing around them, Joonmyun says, “How do you interpret it? The last zone.”  

Jongin stares for a while, at the repeated, moving image of a liquid turning into a gas. He thinks about all the years he’s closed himself off to other people so that they could only watch him from the viewfinder he adjusts again and again to show his best angle.

Now, he wants to give Joonmyun the viewfinder and let him see everything, from the before, to the actual shot, to the after. 

“Paranoia is real,” he says, “but it also escapes from our grasp when we think it’ll always be there. We can touch liquid and not so much gas, but it doesn’t mean gas, or paranoia, isn’t real.”

A glimpse of something unreadable passes over Joonmyun’s face after Jongin says it, but he doesn’t look upset. More… curious, or perplexed, like he didn’t expect that kind of a response from Jongin.

Jongin is bewildered, and tries to divert Joonmyun’s penetrating stare from him by returning the same question. “What do _you_ think?”

“I don’t know,” Joonmyun says. The sliver of that original uncertainty has sewed itself back up, and the focus of his eyes is soft again. “That’s why I asked you.” He is smiling, and Jongin decides he really likes…the way Joonmyun’s mouth always wants to pull up at the corners and show teeth, even if he’s not saying anything that’s supposed to be funny or amusing.

In their last twenty minutes before they need to go to the sound visual performance in zone 2, they go to see the _Artists’ Documents: Art, Typography and Collaboration_ exhibition. Joonmyun puts his full concentration into looking at the pieces, but it’s different, somehow. He’s not hypnotized the same way he was when they walked through _The Paranoid Zone._

“It’s 3:54,” Jongin notes, when he checks his watch. “Want to go early?”

“Yes,” Joonmyun says, all but bouncing his way to zone 2, as Jongin follows behind him with a fond smile.

The performance by Dalparan and Kim Sejin is unique, for sure. Jongin feels lost, as if his body has been split into a million pieces and then thrown back together, which might have been close to the artists’ objective. Joonmyun is just as enraptured with the demonstration as he was with the various installations in the exhibition, and he’s left standing there after everything’s done, the crowd disintegrating until he and Jongin are the only spectators remaining in the room.

Joonmyun’s eyes are glossy. It’s obvious that his mind is far, far away. “Joonmyun,” Jongin says.

“Hm?” Joonmyun snaps out of his reverie and realizes that it’s just the two of them, and the artists who are talking in the front. “Ah, sorry.”

He looks embarrassed. Jongin doesn’t want him to be. “You liked it?” he asks.

“Yes,” Joonmyun says. “I’ll have to think about its meaning for a while, but I liked the performance.”

“It’s a little later than five o’clock,” Jongin says as they’re walking towards the big doors of the museum. “You want to go home, or get something to eat first?”

“Let’s get something to eat. Restaurants have less people around this time so we won’t have to wait in line,” Joonmyun says, after a pause. He pushes the door open and holds it in place for Jongin to pass through once he’s exited himself.

“Thank you,” Jongin says, closing the door behind them. “Where do you want to eat?”

“I know a place nearby, it’s a couple of blocks from here,” Joonmyun points in a general direction to the right. He stops at the intersection when they reach it, deciding with ease which direction to turn and walking briskly. “How do you feel about naengmyeon?”

“That’s fine by me,” Jongin says, and lengthens his stride so he can keep up.

The entrance of the restaurant is run down, faded blue paint on the doorframe peeling messily, but its interior is built in a comfortable home-like style and evidently a popular destination. More than half the tables are already filled, and it’s only a quarter after five.

Over their bowls of naengmyeon, Jongin asks Joonmyun, “Do you come here to see art shows often?”

“At least once or twice a year,” Joonmyun says, moving his half of a boiled egg to the side of his bowl. “This building is actually one of three branches related to the main museum in Gwacheon. I’ve been there once, but I come to this location more often.”

The conversation thins out after that, but the silence is not much of a silence because it’s filled with chatter from other tables and the clinking of eating utensils. Jongin is so focused on eating that he doesn’t realize Joonmyun has stopped to peer over at his tray in amusement.  

“Do you not like mushrooms?” Joonmyun asks, referring to the pile of mushrooms on the small plate next to Jongin’s bowl.

“I don’t really like this type,” Jongin answers. He’s come a long way from his five-year old taste buds, but the odor of these are still a little too pungent for him.

“What a baby,” Joonmyun says, clicking his tongue in a teasing manner. It’s not condescending, though. One by one, he plucks the mushrooms off of Jongin’s plate with his chopsticks and pops them into his mouth. 

(Jongin had dated this one girl in university, and she’d scoffed at his “childish taste,” then tried to make him eat as many mushrooms as possible so he would get over his aversion for them. It didn’t work. He broke up with her a couple weeks after that.

He likes that Joonmyun isn’t trying to change him. But then Jongin thinks, maybe that’s because Joonmyun doesn’t plan on spending much time with him in the future, and his heart feels like it’s getting squeezed into a dress three sizes too small.)

Stomachs full, they split the bill and head off to the nearest bus stop. Joonmyun seems unaffected by the change in their dynamic and the fact that they spent time together without having any sex, but Jongin’s head is filled to the brim with little, endearing details he’s noticed about Joonmyun all day. The shine to his eyes and parting of his lips as he gets fully, deeply absorbed in something. The way he’ll pull Jongin into him, slightly, whenever he thinks Jongin might bump into people passing by in a hurry. The relaxed weight of his body against Jongin’s side while he sleeps, his usual aloofness disappearing as soon as drowsiness takes over.

They don’t talk much after they get off the bus and start walking to Joonmyun’s apartment. Although Jongin is generally self-conscious about trying to break silences with small talk, Joonmyun doesn’t seem to mind the gaps in their conversations. He asks questions if they come up and says what he wants without worrying too much if the timing is perfect. It’s an odd style of speaking that should be jarring, but Jongin finds himself attracted to it (to him) anyways.

“Thank you for coming with me today,” Joonmyun says, once they’ve reached his place and Jongin prepares to get into his car.

“I had a lot of fun,” Jongin responds. He’d gotten to see a compelling set of installations, and a more intimate side of Joonmyun. “Thank you for showing me a cool exhibition.”

Joonmyun’s face brightens, and he says, “Drive safely.” Jongin nods, waving goodbye for as long as he can, and thinks of Joonmyun’s warmth next to him all the way home.  

 

+

 

“Your phone’s ringing, I think,” Sehun says.

They’re drinking at a bar in Itaewon frequented by celebrities often due to its consideration towards their privacy as well as the extremely tight security. Since Sehun spiked both of their drinks earlier so they’d actually get drunk, Jongin is a little sluggish in his movements. His ringtone plays for quite a while before he’s actually able to get his fingers functioning and pick up the call.

“You’re busy,” Joonmyun says right off the bat, probably because he can hear the heavy bass of dance music in the background, and Jongin giggles. It doesn’t really make sense for him to giggle, but he also _really_ likes hearing Joonmyun’s voice, deep and feigning a casualness the older man doesn’t actually feel.

“Never too busy for you,” he mumbles, mouth working too fast for the sober part of his brain to filter through what’s appropriate to say, and ignores the pointed look of interest Sehun throws in his direction.

Someone bumps into him and the unanticipated movement causes him to nearly drop his phone, preventing him from hearing Joonmyun’s response. Jongin’s eyes heat up, swiftly reddening until he sees that the guy is off balance in his attempts to walk a straight line, and then his irritation wears off.

He holds the phone to his ear again. “Sorry, Joonmyun, what did you say? I dropped my phone for a second.”

“You’re busy, and also drunk,” Joonmyun says, suddenly sounding… weird. Like he’s unhappy, and Jongin’s metaphorical tail tucks itself between his legs at the way Joonmyun’s voice flattens with disappointment. Jongin doesn’t know where it’s coming from, but he wants, desperately, for that audible displeasure to go away. 

He tilts his head in confusion as he tries to form sentences. “Only a little drunk? …Not busy, though.”

“Did you mean that?" 

“Mean what?” Jongin is a goldfish in a fishbowl, being watched from all angles, and he can’t see what’s coming at him from behind. 

Joonmyun clears his throat before he says, “That you would never be too busy for me.”

So Joonmyun _did_ hear it. Jongin can’t tell if he’s more pleased or embarrassed. “I mean it. I mean everything I say to you,” he says honestly. “…Would you like to pick me up?

Joonmyun sputters. “What?"  

His startled voice is loud enough that Sehun hears it too, who chuckles from beside Jongin, and Jongin fake growls at his friend before speaking again. “It’d be nice if you were here, that’s all." 

The pause in between is so long that Jongin thinks Joonmyun has hung up, but just as he pulls his phone away from his ear to check the screen, he hears Joonmyun ask, “Where are you?”   

Jongin recites the name of the club and its address, and Joonmyun tells him to stay right where he is, then hangs up.  

“You always look like a puppy, but this is sappy, lovesick pup Jongin at the max,” Sehun says, too clear headed for his own good. Jongin resists the itch to punch him in the face. “Is your lover boy coming to save you with his white horse and A+ pecs?”

Feeling _exposed_ , Jongin asks, “When did I say that he had A+ pecs?”

“You text it to me sometimes when you’re feeling whiny, loser,” Sehun replies, words not slurring a bit. Jongin has never figured out how Sehun manages to consume the same amount of wolfsbane laced alcohol as him and only wind up with pink cheeks but essentially the same demeanor, while Jongin always ends up giggling and blurting out everything that comes to the front of his brain like the village idiot.

In the meantime, two girls approach them with friendly smiles and dark lidded eyes, but Sehun rejects their advances politely while Jongin watches their interaction with a blank expression.

He loses his balance later when trying to lunge at Sehun for some malicious remark, but he’s rescued from his lack of usual coordination by a pair of strong arms. The strong arms are connected to broad shoulders and a face he dreams about more often than not in his sleep. “Joonmyun,” he says, faintly. He’s so pleased.

“Jongin,” Joonmyun replies, mimicking him. “It’s very late.”

Jongin doesn’t think Joonmyun means to chastise him, but the last time he checked, it was only around 1:20 am. “Like you haven’t been out this late before,” he says, without much of a fight.

Joonmyun smiles dangerously at him, causing arousal to curl miserably at the pit of Jongin’s core, but he doesn’t argue back and just turns to Sehun. “Hello, I’m Joonmyun. You are…?”

“I’m Sehun. Nice to meet you,” Sehun says, face neutral as they shake hands.

“Do you mean to stay here for much longer?” Joonmyun’s warm, solid hand is resting on Jongin’s shoulder protectively even though Jongin’s not in danger of falling any time soon. He smells very nice, and Jongin holds back the urge to rub his face into Joonmyun’s neck. Scent marking Joonmyun would probably?? not be a smart idea.

“My initial plan was to be here for at least another forty minutes or so, but I think Jongin’s just about lost it,” Sehun says.

“How much wolfsbane did you give him?” Joonmyun asks. If Jongin was less out of it, he might be able to tell whether Joonmyun is making an accusation or simply curious. 

“Not much, he’s just a bit of a lightweight,” Sehun says.

“Okay,” Joonmyun says, sounding as if he’s frowning, and the corners of his lips really are stretched downwards when Jongin opens his eyes to check.

“Don’t be mad,” Jongin says, instinctively. He rubs at Joonmyun’s arm to calm him.

“I’m not.” Joonmyun softens the edge to his tone. “Just worried. Wolfsbane can be dangerous, even if it’s in small amounts.”

“Sehun always watches out for me,” Jongin says. He hadn’t meant for Joonmyun to come here and be annoyed at his best friend when they were just having a good time.

Jongin glances at Sehun, and… Sehun’s giving him? them? a strange look, It’s like the one that swept across his face every time Jongin tried to explain indefinite integrals to him in high school, except that there’s no calculus here, just Joonmyun and Jongin.

“I’ll take both of you home,” Joonmyun says, and the tension dissipates. “Is that fine?”

“Just take Jongin,” Sehun says, standing up and sticking his hands in his pockets. “I live in the opposite direction of him, basically, so I’ll get a taxi.”

“Alright,” Joonmyun agrees. Once they pay for their drinks, Joonmyun escorts the two of them outside and makes sure that Sehun gets into a taxi before he takes Jongin to his car.

Jongin is pliant as Joonmyun helps him into the passenger’s seat. “You can buckle yourself up, can’t you?” Joonmyun asks, straightening up and raising an eyebrow. 

“I think so,” Jongin says, but changes his mind when he tries to move his fingers and laughs nervously. “…Maybe not.”

He could have gotten it eventually, but Joonmyun doesn’t bother to wait and just leans back into his space, his nose centimeters away from Jongin’s as he fastens the seat belt securely.

“Are you close with Sehun?” Their faces are close enough that Joonmyun’s breath hits his cheek.  

The question catches Jongin off guard mainly because it comes out of nowhere. Joonmyun is looking down, and his eyelashes are short but dark against his pale eyelids. “Yes? He’s my best friend,” says Jongin.

“Oh.” Joonmyun closes the door and walks around the front of the car to get into the driver’s seat before he speaks again. “I know I haven’t met him before, but he looks familiar.”

“He does modelling work,” Jongin says. “I think he’s starting to get more well-known recently.”

“Is that so?” Joonmyun hums thoughtfully to himself. “I see. I might have come across pictures of him for a spread at some point and not remembered.”

Words float up to Jongin’s tongue, then slip out of his reach when he tries to open his mouth and actually say them. It’s probably because he’s getting drowsy, but he doesn’t want Joonmyun to stop talking to him. “Could be,” is all he manages to get out in the end.

“Man, that’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” Jongin asks.  

“I don’t know what I was expecting when I came to pick you up,” Joonmyun says. “It’s only natural for you to have friends.”   

If the comment was coming from anyone else, Jongin would think they’re being jealous. But this is Joonmyun, so he doesn’t walk down that path of foolishness. “I’m very likeable,” he says, thinking about that one time Sehun said his personality only consisted of puppy yips, over-eagerness, and nothing else substantial enough to hold onto. It had hurt, because that’s what a lot of people genuinely believed about him when they tried to “date” him, but Jongin had ignored the momentary sting, and then it was gone.    

“Everyone has friends,” Jongin says, “right?”

“Not everyone,” Joonmyun answers, and in Jongin’s hazy vision, his smile looks ironic, even if half of it is obscured by the hard shadows in the car.

 

+

 

Their well-worn pattern breaks.

Jongin is in the middle of waking up to a stifling, unmoving source of heat on his left side, and he nudges it away from him quite a few times to see if he can kick it off the bed. That is, until he hears an aggravated “what,” loud and clear, which makes him sit straight up.  

There’s a lump that’s definitely, most certainly Joonmyun under the blankets, and Jongin’s brain isn’t really processing the fact that Joonmyun has stayed the night instead of leaving, like he always does. Like he’s supposed to. Why has he done that? “Joonmyun?”

“Yes?” Joonmyun says, sounding unbelievably testy. He sticks his head out, eyebrows scrunched. “What is it?” Tufts of hair are sticking up in all directions, and Jongin thinks Joonmyun looks especially cute like this, cranky and defensive but much too sluggish to put on his defensive spikes just yet.

“You’re still here.”

“…Am I an apparition?” Joonmyun snaps, after a beat of silence, then pulls the comforter higher to cover his face again.

Jongin starts to protest, but then he shrugs, deciding to drop it. If Joonmyun is refusing to make a big deal out of this, he won’t either. He files the thought and conversation away for another time. “What do you want for breakfast?” he asks.

“Anything,” he hears from under the covers, and what Jongin doesn’t see, is that Joonmyun’s cheeks and ears are flaming red because of the blunder he’s made and can’t take back.

 

+

 

“What do you do for work?” Joonmyun asks, head in the refrigerator. Originally, he was putting away the groceries Jongin had bought earlier, but Jongin didn’t buy that many groceries, so he assumes Joonmyun is organizing the food now and lets him enjoy his fun.

Jongin nearly drops the spatula onto the floor, since Joonmyun rarely asks personal questions. He supposes it was bound to come up at some point, because it must be odd for Joonmyun to see Jongin basically not have work half the time.

“I work freelance,” Jongin replies. He sets the spatula down and attempts to flip the gigantic veggie pancake onto the other side. It is a success, except for the small bit of the edge that spills out of the pan. He folds it back in, carefully. “I majored in interaction design and have some background with business administration.”

 _Some background,_ meaning two years of classes he’d hated no matter how hard he tried to change his perspective. He remembers the terrifyingly quiet conversations in his father’s office as he expressed his disappointment with Jongin and at last, receiving his father’s reluctant approval to drop out of his business minor. He pushes the thought into the back of his head.

“I see,” Joonmyun says, in a pensive tone. The refrigerator dings angrily for the third time, in warning that its doors are still open and losing cold air. Jongin hears the doors swing closed, and footsteps approaching until a familiar warmth is behind him. Joonmyun hovers, when Jongin cooks, because he feels uncomfortable sitting down. “That explains the lack of normal working hours.”

“Yes,” Jongin laughs. “I seem to play a lot, but I work sometimes, Joonmyun. Don’t worry.”

“Who said I was worried,” Joonmyun says, but there’s no harshness in his voice. If you ask Jongin, he thinks Joonmyun needs to say a few incisive things a day, as a reminder to both Jongin and himself that he doesn’t have that much attachment to their relationship, whatever it is.

“You must think I look like a rich kid that doesn’t take anything seriously, right?” Jongin jokes, sliding the cooked pancake onto a plate and handing it to Joonmyun. “Rich, useless, party boy” is the image that he’d been associated with in his teenage years and early twenties, until he finally moved out of his parents’ home and started supporting himself financially with client-based work. He’s not really interested in the family business, and his father had only willingly let him go after realizing his older sister was much better suited, personality wise, for leading the company in the future.

“No,” Joonmyun disagrees. “If you were a rich kid, I wouldn’t come within a fifty mile radius of you.” He wraps an arm around Jongin’s waist, but Jongin feels icy. 

Alarms sound in Jongin’s mind as he pours the rest of the batter into the pan. It sizzles, and a small drop of oil splashes on him. It burns a little, but the pain is forgotten in pursuit of Joonmyun’s reasoning behind his statement. “Why not?”

“Social classes don’t mix,” Joonmyun says.

“That’s not always the case,” Jongin says. There were plenty of classmates in university that he got along with regardless of their differences in family backgrounds, and he still keeps in touch with several of them. “Have you ever met one?”

“Maybe.” Joonmyun shrugs, but his slight frown suggests a painted lightheartedness that is heavier than it looks. His eyes are glassy, kind of like when Jongin had asked him about his scar and after a pause, he raises his eyebrows. “Why are you so intent on asking?" 

Jongin’s heart is pounding, but he hopes Joonmyun attributes it to how much he likes him, and not the fact that he’s almost telling a lie. “My friend is rich, but he’s not...he’s a great person, you know.” It’s not so much lying as it is conveniently avoiding the truth, he thinks, which is only marginally better. 

“I’m sure he is,” Joonmyun says, agreeably. The thickness of the atmosphere has disappeared, and he sneaks a bite of the pancake before Jongin lightly slaps at his hand. “Are you secretly a cooking whiz?”

Jongin flushes all shades of warm. “I don’t cook that much. Just easy dishes, because I’m lazy.”

“Lazy people don’t make tasty dishes,” Joonmyun counters, grinning after he licks his lips, and Jongin smiles back at him. Aside from the temporary mood swing, Joonmyun’s slightly more relaxed today. It’s taken a long time for Jongin to master the balance between them just having sex as usual versus tricking Joonmyun into spending time with him for more innocent reasons. Although their trip to the museum has somehow solidified their compatibility and increased Joonmyun’s trust towards Jongin, he still hasn’t seemed to change his expectations towards their purely sexual relationship. He’ll try to bolt as soon as he feels there’s commitment or domesticity taking place, but sometimes he gets distracted enough that he won’t think too deeply about Jongin’s motives.

Commitment doesn’t scare Jongin nearly as much as it scares Joonmyun. Joonmyun’s avoidance comes from fear and anxiety over something unnamed he can’t control, while Jongin’s tendencies to play around started because he was bored and lonely but unwilling to open up to people who only liked what they saw of him on the surface.

“Do you ever…” Jongin starts saying, but stops. He’s not sure how he wanted to finish that question, what he wanted to know in the first place. _Do you ever look for something more than this? Do you ever feel empty, going on like this?_

Joonmyun glances at him sharply. “Do I ever what?”

“Never mind,” Jongin says. “It’s nothing.”

What Jongin fears more than commitment, is the way Joonmyun bristles whenever Jongin digs a tad too deep into his personal life, or the dismissive look he’ll sometimes give Jongin right before Jongin wants to say he likes him. He tries to push for a step forward, but if that step is too daring, Joonmyun will make sure he takes three steps backward. No one else has ever made Jongin feel so uncertain, yet the anticipation of perhaps one day being able to peel every layer of Joonmyun down to the core and finding… love there, just for him is enough for Jongin to keep going.

There’s no hesitation in his feelings for Joonmyun, and he’ll wait patiently, until Joonmyun can finally be honest with his own. His wolf is at peace whenever the older man is around, and uncomfortable when the older man leaves. Jongin wonders if Joonmyun ever listens to what his wolf wants, and if what his wolf wants might be Jongin.

 

+

 

“So you’re telling me, Sehun says, in his duller than rocks voice, “that the guy you want to be mates with hates rich guys. Which, you are, by your family background and general income.”

“I don’t think he’ll find out,” Jongin says, weakly, in a tone that sounds unconvincing even to himself. The bowl of noodles sitting in front of him doesn’t seem so appetizing anymore. “It’s not like I’m training to become CEO of the company. Jungah is. I’m working on my own.”

“That doesn’t matter. The moment he’s suspicious enough to search your name up, you’re royally fucked,” Sehun warns. “For life.” Jongin rolls his eyes, because Sehun’s efforts on being extra positive and keeping morale up for everyone are solid.

“Well, I’m not going to bring it up to him,” Jongin says. “That’s asking for trouble.” Joonmyun already hates to be pinned down, and if he finds out a guy, whose assets in stocks can buy up to several apartment buildings, is trying to pin him down as a boyfriend, all hell will break loose. Jongin will probably never be allowed to see him again.

Sehun’s laugh is brittle. “Why did your dumb wolf ass have to pick someone that’s turned off by commitment and financial security?”

“Do you think I asked to be in this situation? It’s not like I can control my feelings, especially because we’re not immune to natural instincts like humans are.”

“I know,” Sehun says, “but you say that like you have no other choices, which isn’t true. Aside from being dumb, you’re also a romantic, so I’m not sure why you picked Joonmyun over all the other people that are much more straightforward about their interest in you.”

“Joonmyun is different,” Jongin says. “He doesn’t try… to take advantage of me or use me as a stepping stool before they move on to the next best thing.”

“Why are you always so _paranoid_ about that?” Sehun asks. “I’m not saying there aren’t assholes you’ve had to deal with, but I’ve seen people who actually wanted to date you, and you would brush them off.”

Jongin doesn’t date people who want his money, he doesn’t date people who think the sun shines out of his ass without having ever talked to him, and he definitely doesn’t date people who fit into both of those categories. He’s watched the light go out in eyes that used to admire him from afar so fervently, and it scares him, that he might keep falling below all these expectations. He patches up his flaws pretty well now, at the age of twenty five, but he’s gotten into the habit of keeping everyone at a distance in order to keep that hopeful light illuminated in their eyes forever.

“I don’t like people who idolize me. They’re always disappointed when they finally realize I’m not their fantasy boyfriend.” Jongin has not told Sehun about many of his failed relationships. Joonmyun is an outlier in a collection of unpromising data Jongin hasn’t shown anybody else.

“You know, it’s strange,” Sehun says. “You said he’s not really into being tied down, but the day he came to pick you up…”

“Sorry about his behavior, by the way,” Jongin says. “I don’t know what happened. He doesn’t usually act out like that.” Even in the time when Jongin had still been attempting to sleep with other people, Joonmyun never got as riled up about someone touching Jongin as he did when he saw Sehun.

“It’s fine,” Sehun says, “I was only mildly traumatized, that’s all.”

“I _said_ I was sorry—”

Sehun sticks his tongue out before Jongin can finish his whiny apology. “If he means it, about not wanting a serious relationship, his actions are very contradicting to his words,” Sehun says.

“What do you mean?”

“In the simplest, nicest words… he’s very protective. And possessive, holy.”

Jongin considers it. “I think he was just worried, since he had never met you before.” For Joonmyun, it might not have been any different than moving Jongin to the inside of the sidewalk in order to prevent him from getting run over by crazy drivers.

“No, that’s not…” At a temporary loss for words, Sehun takes a sip from his iced tea. “Think about it, Jongin. Would you come rushing so late at night for someone you fucked around with but didn’t really care about?”

“No way,” Jongin says. Then, “Oh.”

Sehun snorts. “ _Oh_ indeed. His eyes also turned golden for a moment before he got it under control. Anyone who says omegas are nonthreatening and submissive are wrong. I thought I was going to get killed, Jongin, just for being your _friend_. I could have gotten hurt for something I don’t even _enjoy._ ”

“Shut _up,_ I hate you,” Jongin says. “You’re exaggerating.” There’s an uncomfortable heat travelling up his spine and spreading to the rest of his body. He feels like a middle school student, giggling about whether a look in his direction means someone _like-likes_ him.

“You shouldn’t let your guard down with people like him, though,” Sehun says. “Hesitation is as good as a no, and his inconsistent behavior doesn’t necessarily mean things are going to end up in your favor.”

Jongin has known that from the beginning, but knowing it doesn’t make listening to Sehun’s warning any easier.

“So… are you telling me to keep on pursuing him or not?” Jongin asks. One moment, Sehun’s telling him how protective Joonmyun is and the next, he’s saying Jongin should keep his guard up around him. 

“I’m telling you to keep your eyes peeled, you oaf. He’s an omega, which is supposed to make him more susceptible to alphas, yet he doesn’t show any sign of really, being an omega except for his scent. That’s kinda freaky,” says Sehun. “I’d like to say I’m 100% sure that he’s _into_ you, based on his mini freak out over me giving you a little wolfsbane for fun, but I don’t know.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Jongin says, “but Joonmyun is the first person I’ve liked enough that I want to actually chase after him, and I think I’m okay with getting hurt if it just means that I tried my best for something I really wanted.”

Even if it’s risky, Jongin is both explicably and inexplicably drawn to Joonmyun, whose nature doesn’t seem to fit the cookie-cutter he’s been given by other people. He’s wild and uncontrollable, but he’s also incredibly docile when he thinks no one’s watching.    

Sehun clenches his teeth a couple of times. “You’re okay with it, but I don’t want you to get hurt,” he says, fiddling with his chopsticks before setting them down in the end. “Because even if you’re a dick sometimes, you really cherish people when you truly love them, and I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t tell you upright whether they want that from you or not.”

Jongin rubs his face in embarrassment at the sentimental atmosphere. Something harder to endure than the usual, peanut brittle Sehun is cheesy, genuine Sehun since it’s so rare and out of character. “I get it. Thanks.”

“Just be careful.” Sehun is quick to change back to his aloof tone, and it’s a relief for both of them. “I wouldn’t bother gluing you back together if you shattered into a million pieces.”

“I will,” Jongin says. “And you so would.”

 

+

 

A week later, Joonmyun drops by unannounced when Jongin’s preparing to leave for a family lunch gathering. He’s got a bag of pastries from Jongin’s favorite bakery, and his face, as disciplined as Joonmyun is about emotions, falls a little at the sight of Jongin getting dressed.

“You should have called me first,” Jongin says, adjusting his tie even though he knows no amount of fixing can save the crookedness. Joonmyun looks like he’s holding himself back from retying it altogether. “Then we could have met up properly.”  

Joonmyun teeth worry at his lower lip. “It’s fine,” he answers with false nonchalance, setting the bag down on Jongin’s coffee table. “Where are you going?”

“Family meal,” Jongin explains, pulling on his blazer. “My parents enjoy getting dressed up.” He slaps at the fabric of his slacks as an attempt to save the slight wrinkle. There is no time for ironing.

It’s a formal matchmaker meeting for his sister, Jungah, where both sides of the family meet, but Jongin doesn’t understand why he has to be present when he’s not the one trying to get married. Despite the inconvenience, it’s long overdue since he doesn’t put away that much time to visit his family except during holidays.  

“I see,” Joonmyun says. “Have fun.” It sounds oddly detached, as if he’s on a raft floating farther and farther in an ocean Jongin can’t swim in. He’s also staring at Jongin’s clothes, but Jongin doesn’t make a note of it. Since it’s his mission in life to try and get away with wearing sweats as often as possible, it’s unsurprising that Joonmyun is looking at his outfit longer than usual.

“Is there something wrong?” Jongin asks. He doesn’t know if Joonmyun has realized yet himself, but he has a tendency to come to Jongin by his own will whenever he’s feeling upset. The museum visit, too, had been a source of rehabilitation for Joonmyun’s emotional stability. Jongin’s just not sure what for.

Joonmyun’s fingers fidget, curling and then uncurling over each other. He keeps his gaze down at his hands, instead of Jongin. “No, nothing.”

Even though he says nothing is wrong, Jongin can tell that Joonmyun’s more restless than usual, but he doesn’t want to push too far. The anxiety in the older man’s scent isn’t severe enough for Jongin to call it out, and Joonmyun doesn’t like it when Jongin relies on his sense of smell to force Joonmyun to talk. “I’ll be back in two hours. Do you want to meet up then?" 

Joonmyun looks conflicted, but ends up nodding. “I’ll just put these in the fridge for now,” he says, picking up the plastic bag of baked goods.

“That’ll be nice, thank you.” Jongin picks up his phone and slips it into his back pocket as Joonmyun walks into the kitchen. “Do you want to stay here? Until I come back. You don’t have to, it’s only if you want but-”

“Is that okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” Jongin replies. “You can sleep in my bed or something, since you seem tired.”

“Thank you,” Joonmyun says. His eyes travel to Jongin’s lips, briefly, and Jongin hurries to make his exit before he loses his composure and ends up in the wrong mood before lunch has even started.

“Bye. I’ll be back soon. Rest up, okay?” he says, opening the front door after he puts on his shoes.

Joonmyun looks tiny and child-like, even though he’s only standing a few feet away. His eyes are saying everything his mouth isn’t, and it makes Jongin feel particularly cruel to leave him like this. “Okay,” Joonmyun says, folding his arms over his chest.

“Hey,” Jongin says, stepping back into his apartment on his tiptoes because he doesn’t want to dirty the floor. He hugs Joonmyun, who just melts into it. “Don’t miss me _so_ much. I’ll be back soon.”

Joonmyun just mumbles something indecipherable into Jongin’s shirt, but doesn’t bother repeating it when Jongin asks. Jongin can only delay his leaving so much, though, and he offers his most comforting smile before he closes the door.

 

+

 

The matchmaking session appears to be a success. Jungah seems to like Minseok, who’s an associate professor at Seoul National University, and they get along naturally well, at least with the eyes of all family members on them. Minseok wore glasses, had hair that was neatly gelled back, and smiled like the sun lived inside of him even when someone told a bad joke.

Jongin’s mother hovers near Jongin when the two families part ways, Jungah and Minseok having exchanged phone numbers. “Jongin-ah,” she calls, hooking her arm around his despite their height difference. “How is my baby?”

“Alright,” Jongin says. “Slightly less clients lately, but they’re trickling in." 

“That’s good to hear.” She pats his arm affectionately. Her perfume smells sweet. “If things don’t work out, you can always come back and work at your father’s company.”

Jongin’s eyes flicker over to where his father is standing. Going to his father’s company is not exactly on his list of back up plans even if his current work fails him. Jongin did not give up business administration with the intention of possibly coming back to it in the future.

His mother means no harm, though. “You’ll never stop hoping for that, will you?” Jongin laughs.

“I like that you’re independent,” she says, “but I do wish that I got to see you more often. I feel more at ease with Jungah because she’s always close by.” She stares up into his eyes without breaking eye contact, searching for something. “Have you found a mate?”

The question isn’t unexpected; his mom has been asking every so often since Jongin moved out to live on his own. But it has a lot more meaning now that he’s met Joonmyun, and he’s not sure if he wants to reveal the object of his affections to his mother just yet. He settles with an answer that’s both vague and informative. “That is... debatable.”

“I thought so,” his mother says, with a knowing smile on her face. “You look a lot calmer, more weighed down on the ground than you used to.”

“Are you saying that I used to be flighty?” Jongin asks, chuckling.

Never one to offend too much, his mother smoothly changes the subject. “Who is it? This person that’s caught your interest?”

“He works at Sehun’s mother’s company,” Jongin starts off. That seems to be safe enough, since hundreds of employees work in ZAP.

“What is his name?” his mother asks, clearly not intending to leave any space for secrecy, and Jongin winces. “Why are you making that face? Shouldn’t I be meeting him soon enough anyways?”

“He’s not exactly...the relationship type,” Jongin says. “It’s hard to get him just to spend time with me. I’m trying to warm him up to the idea of mates. Slowly.”

“Sounds like your father,” Jongin’s mother says, laughing. She always complains about age deepening the lines in her skin, but Jongin thinks they only make her more beautiful, more life-worn. “He was so against the idea of us being mates that he avoided coming in my direction for at least a few months before finally giving in.”

“Really?” Jongin can’t imagine it with how dependent his father is on his mother now. They’re always together whenever his father isn’t in the office or held up in board meetings. It gives him hope that Joonmyun may come around in the end, though he knows there’ll be plenty of obstacles for him to climb over before securing Joonmyun as his.

“Yes,” Jongin’s mother responds. “Since your compatible scents should already be working in your favor, just put in some extra effort to woo him and your trap is set.”

 _If only it were that easy,_ Jongin thinks wistfully. Less people believe in the idea of mates nowadays due to a wider cultural acceptance for casual sex, not to mention that Joonmyun is not wooed easily by anything or anyone.  

“Ma’am.” The family attorney comes up and greets Jongin, before letting Jongin’s mother know the car is ready.  

“Well, I’ll see you soon! Let me know when your beloved falls for your charms,” she waves as she gets into the car. Jongin waves back until the car is out of sight, and then he gets into his own car to drive home.

 

+

 

When Jongin enters his bedroom, he finds Joonmyun curled in fetal position in his bed, blankets twisted around his body to reveal his innocent demeanor in his sleep, and it makes Jongin’s heart swell up to an unhealthy size. He decides to change out of his suit first before he wakes Joonmyun up, but a phone call from his sister interrupts him while he’s still undoing his tie.

“Hey,” he says, after fumbling with his phone and trying not to drop it on the ground. Although Joonmyun’s heartbeat sounds slow enough to indicate he’s pretty knocked out, Jongin still steps out into the hallway to continue the conversation. “What’s up?”

She asks, “What did you think of Minseok?”

“He’s nice,” Jongin says. “Why?” It’s unlike his sister to ask for his opinion on boyfriends or potential partners, since she mostly does things according to her own wishes without being restrained by other people’s thoughts. She’s not selfish; she was more filial than Jongin in her training to take over the company, but she’s definitely not a pushover.

“To be honest, I was already seeing him before we set up the matchmaking appointment,” she says. “Though I didn’t know beforehand that it was going to be him.”

“Ah,” Jongin says. That makes more sense. It also explains how they hit it off so quickly.

A long pause on the other side. “Do you really think he’s nice, or were you just saying that?”

“I don’t think one meeting can offer me too much insight on Minseok’s entire personality. You’ll want to ask Mom for that,” Jongin says. Their mother has keen intuition on people’s true natures, better than anyone else. “What’s more important is that you like him, and he treats you well, right?”

“Oh, I don’t think there’s an issue with that,” Jungah says, sounding embarrassed. “But sometimes family members can see things that the individual can’t. I’m glad to hear that nothing about him seemed too off to you.”

Minseok must be a big deal, if the way she talks changes just by mentioning him. She used to remain fairly cool towards her boyfriends throughout university and graduate school and breakups never affected her for too long. Now, she sounds anxious even if she’s not admitting it directly. “You must like Minseok a lot,” Jongin teases. “To come ask for my opinion so soon, Jungah noona.”

“I do,” she says, and from the sound of her voice, she must be smiling now. “Tell me how your work is going lately.”

Joonmyun is rubbing his eyes sleepily when Jongin steps back into his bedroom. He’s made an attempt at sitting up, but it looks like he gave up halfway and laid back down. “You’re back. Who were you talking to?”

“My sister, Jungah,” says Jongin, as he sits down on the bed. Despite being half lidded, Joonmyun’s eyes track his movement. “Sorry I took a while. Traffic was a mess. Did you have a good nap?”

In reply, Joonmyun makes a humming noise, pressing on his eye sockets with the palms of his hands. Jongin stands up so he can change out of his clothes, and pulls on some black sweats and an old training shirt after hanging the suit up in his closet.

“Did you want to eat some of the food you brought me?” Jongin asks. “I just had lunch, so I’m a little full, but…”

“It’s okay,” Joonmyun says. “I don’t like sweets that much.”

Jongin doesn’t think it’s a big deal until he sees the way Joonmyun is avoiding eye contact and his ears redden, the rest of his face remaining embarrassment free. “Did you buy those...just for me?” he wheedles, and Joonmyun looks so affronted by the cute act that Jongin bursts into obnoxious laughter. Joonmyun remains silent, but the corner of his mouth lifts upward and ruins his glare no matter how hard he tries to hold it.

“You were upset before I left.” Jongin sits on the bed again, turning towards Joonmyun. “Want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly,” Joonmyun says. “Can you distract me?”

Jongin makes a move to lean over and kiss him, but Joonmyun’s hand on his shoulder stops him. “Not like that,” Joonmyun says, hands clutching at the blanket uncomfortably. Even though his face doesn’t reveal anything, he smells overwhelmingly sad, and Jongin is at a loss for what to do.

“I can put on a movie for us to watch,” he suggests, eventually.

Jongin can see Joonmyun’s Adam apple bob as he swallows. “That would be nice,” Joonmyun says. “What do you have?”

Jongin points at the shelf next to his window. The lower half is filled with thick books on modern art and instructional books he used when he was in college, but the upper half has a collection of movies based on his own tastes as well as friends’ gifts from years past. “They’re all here, if you want to pick.”

Joonmyun emerges from the cocoon he’s made with Jongin’s blankets, leaving it behind as he stands in front of the shelf to browse carefully through the titles. He holds his hands behind his back, until he makes a final decision and pulls out an animation film as soon as he sees the title. “This one,” he says, handing it over to Jongin, who sets it up in the living room on his DVD player without a word.  

Jongin sprawls out on the couch once he’s done setting up, letting his feet dangle diagonally off the side so that Joonmyun has space to sit next to him. Well-mannered in comparison to Jongin, Joonmyun sits with his legs crossed like an elementary school student waiting for the teacher’s story time, and only starts to unfold and spread his legs out around the halfway point of the movie.

Physical contact that isn’t sexual usually scares off Joonmyun, but this time he’s the one to initiate it, wrapping his arms around Jongin’s waist and resting his head on Jongin’s shoulder. They stay like that for a while. As the screen continues to play sound and flash images, Jongin pays more attention to the evening out of Joonmyun’s breaths and the steadily slowing beat of his heart. _Thump. Thump. Thump._

Even though Joonmyun smiles at funny parts of the movie and reacts to other parts as expected of him, the sadness in his scent doesn’t diminish by much. As thorny as he can be, Joonmyun isn’t a negative person by default. He’s just careful with the lens he lets other people see him through the same way Jongin is.

But today is different. It’s like Joonmyun is too tired to do any better, building his fort walls sloppily and involuntarily leaving holes for Jongin to catch glimpses of what he usually covers well. Jongin, in all his unvoiced worrying, feels like Joonmyun’s listlessness is a flood that flows too fast, too aggressively into the house for them to scoop the water back out in time.

For now, all he can do is stay by Joonmyun’s side while Joonmyun takes on a silent, faceless monster by himself.

 

+

 

They run into Yixing at a convenience store.

Jongin sees the man first, who’s come into the same aisle as them and is watching Joonmyun openly, while Joonmyun is still preoccupied with picking the right cold sore medicine. His blonde bangs are choppy on his forehead, and he’s wearing a bomber jacket with mock paint streaks all over it. “Joonmyun?” 

Joonmyun is slow to turn his head, but his face breaks out into a wide smile when he does. “Yixing!” he says. His voice squeaks and then drops, a sign of discomfort, and Jongin’s interest is piqued.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Yixing says. The way he talks is comparable to the way a sloth clings onto a treasured tree branch, slow but steady, his words meticulously separated. “The last time we met up was in August, right?”

The significance of his words doesn’t really sink in until Jongin sees Joonmyun’s ears turning pink, and then he remembers.

The art exhibition. They had gone to seen it nearly a month ago, in mid-November, and there was no way that Yixing had been the one to give Joonmyun the tickets if the last time Joonmyun saw him was three months before that.   

“Yes,” Joonmyun says, glancing at Jongin and cringing in regret. His face betrays a mixture of petulance and embarrassment, as if he’s annoyed at Yixing for bringing up an unnecessary detail but also annoyed at himself for not going to greater lengths to prevent this awkwardness.

“And this is…?” Yixing asks, eyes travelling to behind Joonmyun where Jongin’s standing and holding a shopping basket. His gaze is unassuming, but he probably knows more than he’s letting on. Jongin remembers, inconveniently, that there are condoms at the bottom of the basket, and doesn’t bother trying to move them since it’ll just be more conspicuous.

“My… my friend, Jongin. Jongin, this is Yixing. He’s a friend of mine from university,” Joonmyun stammers, after a short but distinct pause, and Yixing smiles pleasantly at Jongin, holding out his hand for Jongin to shake.

“Hello, Jongin-ssi,” he says, in polite speech. When Jongin replies hello back and offers his hand to complete the greeting, Yixing’s eyes crinkle attractively in delight. He and Joonmyun talk about what he’s been up to the last couple of months while Jongin scans the shelves for the specific brand of medicine Joonmyun wanted, catching bits and pieces of their conversation, including the fact that Yixing was travelling overseas with his dance team for several competitions and performances with music artists.

After receiving a phone call, Yixing tells them he has to go but that it was nice seeing them, and leaves first.

Jongin doesn’t interrogate Joonmyun for clarification about Yixing’s whereabouts in November because he doesn’t want to put pressure on Joonmyun, but keeping quiet only seems to worsen the pressure. Joonmyun keeps fixing the hair by his sideburns, a habit he reverts to when he’s feeling self-conscious, and he’s not focusing long enough on the products to be actually _looking_ at them. Eventually, he asks, “Aren’t you going to ask me any questions?”

Knowing that Joonmyun might have bought those tickets himself and created an excuse for Jongin to come along with him to the exhibition is a… shocking, but nevertheless gratifying thought. It’s not that Jongin doesn’t want to ask, but he doesn’t need a verbal confirmation right now for something Joonmyun’s not ready to reveal yet. 

“No,” he replies, and thinks of how he can phrase this, so that Joonmyun knows that he has the power to make a choice between telling Jongin if he wants to and not telling Jongin if he doesn’t want to. “Not if they’re going to be hard for you to answer.” 

Joonmyun frowns, probably confused as to why Jongin is letting it go so easily. “Okay. I—”

“Okay,” Jongin says, in agreement, so that Joonmyun doesn’t have to fumble for words when they can simply move on. “So did you decide on which medicine you want yet?”

 

+

 

When Mamamoo’s _You Are the Best_ starts blasting throughout Jongin’s living room, he rolls off the couch and crawls to the coffee table where his phone is. “Joonmyun?” 

“Can you come over?” Joonmyun says, breathing heavily, with no space between his words.  

“What’s wrong?” Jongin asks. This is new territory he’s stepping into, since there have been several times where Joonmyun has specifically avoided letting Jongin come into his apartment. Even when they went to the museum a few weeks ago, Joonmyun had shielded the interior view of his apartment from Jongin by only opening the door halfway as he went to get his keys. 

“Just come over, _please_ ,” Joonmyun chokes out. “It’s hard for me to talk.”

Jongin is about to ask Joonmyun if he’s dying until he thinks of the next closest possibility. “Are...are you in _heat?_ ”

There’s a lot of incoherent whimpering that probably means Jongin is right, and that thought alone sends Jongin’s soul leaking out in waves. “Where do you live? Give me a few minutes."

“I’ll text you my address,” Joonmyun says, and hangs up.  

Jongin considers making a quick trip to the convenience store for whatever Joonmyun might need, but he ends up just grabbing a new jar of heat-soothing balm out of his pantry and gets into his car. He starts driving as soon as he’s searched up the route to Joonmyun’s address, and almost falls through Joonmyun’s door because it opens even before he’s knocked.

“I could smell you,” Joonmyun says, answering Jongin’s unspoken question. He looks like he just tossed on a shirt haphazardly for the sake of being slightly more presentable, with one side hanging crookedly and his collarbones showing as a result. His cheeks are flushed pink, and his lips are dark from being bitten so much. Jongin tries not to let his mind wander too far about what Joonmyun’s been doing to make himself bite his lips so hard. He does, however, make the mistake of looking down. Joonmyun’s legs are so pale, but muscular, and Jongin wants to bite into them…

His attention is drawn back upwards when Joonmyun tugs impatiently, but not with very much strength, at Jongin’s clothes. His movement sends yet more pheromones radiating into the air and they make Jongin almost lightheaded with lust. Yellow eyes stare up at Jongin’s crimson ones as Joonmyun nudges the bag off of Jongin’s shoulder and pulls him toward the bedroom. They fall easily onto the bed, Joonmyun’s warm, almost hot thighs straddling Jongin’s hips securely as he leans down to kiss Jongin, fingertips pressed firmly along his neck.  

It’s clear that Joonmyun’s wolf has completely taken over the behavior-portion of his brain, because this Joonmyun has no qualms about stripping and using his body to ask openly for what he wants from Jongin. Nighttime Joonmyun sneaks up on Jongin and takes what he wants, secretly and manipulatively, but the Joonmyun right now is allowing Jongin to see him in his most vulnerable, open state while hiding nothing.   

“You smell so nice,” Joonmyun says, feverishly. He’s shaking, and his eyes roll back before he manages to focus his gaze on Jongin again. “Can you fuck me? Fuck me-”

“Okay, okay,” Jongin responds, rolling them over so that he’s on top and starts shedding his clothes. He soothes Joonmyun’s rambling by mouthing over Joonmyun’s jaw and brushing his hair away from his forehead. Joonmyun’s skin is so hot. “I’m guessing I don’t need to prepare you?”

Joonmyun makes some sort of noise to confirm Jongin’s assumption, and squeezes Jongin’s thigh briefly. Even so, Jongin checks Joonmyun’s entrance to make sure he won’t hurt him. Sure enough, the area is leaking with natural lubricant, and he can’t resist pushing in a finger, then a second into the wetness.

“I don’t want –” Joonmyun pushes his hips downward, sucking Jongin’s fingers deeper inside of him. “Not _enough_.”

“Are you sure?” Jongin says, and Joonmyun gives up words in favor of a high pitched whine.

He makes a soft groan of relief when Jongin finally pushes in. Only a few minutes pass before Joonmyun already seems to be approaching his first climax from the stimulation, his moans getting more and more frequent, shorter and less drawn out. He bites into the back of his hand to muffle his sounds, but Jongin slaps at his hand lightly so Joonmyun doesn’t end up breaking skin. Jongin forms a tight circle around Joonmyun’s cock with his fingers and strokes quickly.

“Jonginnie, I’m going to–!” Joonmyun says, breathlessly, hands clutching at the bed sheets. Usually his voice is silky and collected, but now it’s ragged and filled with desperation as his eyes begin to glisten with tears.

“Just come. It’s okay,” Jongin reassures him, and struggles not to smile so hard at the affectionate term Joonmyun’s inadvertently used. Despite his effort to maintain composure, Jongin’s hips stutter all the same. He has to slow down his pace to prevent himself from coming, focusing on the slow, obscene slide in and out of Joonmyun’s heat and the way the back of his thighs and Jongin’s hips slot together so perfectly. 

Joonmyun arches his back, baring his neck to Jongin, who sucks aggressively at a spot that he know will show up later no matter how high Joonmyun tries to pull his collar. The high pitched cry that leaves Joonmyun’s mouth the instant he comes is enough to fuel Jongin’s fantasies for the rest of his life. It’s completely unhinged and animalistic, like Joonmyun’s orgasm is being violently torn from him, and the cry gradually winds down to quiet whimpers as he calms down. Unsurprisingly, Jongin comes soon afterwards, but he pulls out before his knot can form since Joonmyun probably needs a few more rounds to break his heat.

Joonmyun has turned his head to the side so that his cheek is laid flat against the pillow, and Jongin presses his hand to Joonmyun’s face to check his temperature. The omega’s skin has cooled considerably, but it still feels extremely warm to the touch.  Running his hand up and down Joonmyun’s arm, he asks, “How was it? Do you feel better?” as he hovers over a dozing off Joonmyun.

Joonmyun nods absentmindedly, and mumbles, “Good. Thank you.” With his prickly walls lowered and armor shed, he falls asleep easily to the sensation of Jongin massaging his scalp.

 

+

 

Jongin can feel Joonmyun waking up. The older man’s heartbeat quickens in pace as he starts to roll over, but he freezes when his back hits Jongin’s. His heat had made him act very out of character without holding back any of his impulses, and the effects of recollection are most likely hitting him now. Pretending he’s still half-asleep, Jongin groans and wraps his arms around Joonmyun.

“What are you-” Joonmyun starts, tone bordering on irritated, but he stops talking and relaxes when Jongin feigns unconsciousness, snoring in his most convincing manner. Jongin smiles into Joonmyun’s hair at the quiet victory. Even so, the inevitable is the inevitable, and Jongin knows they’re going to need to have a conversation because they can only delay getting out of bed for so long.

It’s exciting for Jongin. This is the first time he’s been to Joonmyun’s home, but his happiness diminishes a little when he remembers that Joonmyun invited him over in a half-dazed state, barely able to stand on his feet. Joonmyun for certain won’t acknowledge any romantic feelings as soon as he’s fully awake, and he’ll blame everything he said previously on his muddled thinking during his heat.

In the moments when Joonmyun had temporarily sated his sexual drive, Jongin would bring him water and feed him, so it was unavoidable for him to see the rest of Joonmyun’s apartment. Joonmyun’s place is a little cramped, but cozy, nonetheless. All of the furniture is charcoal gray, nearly black in color, and everything else is white. Everything is placed neatly, either in the corner of the rooms in stacks, (books and magazines) or hung up on racks. The only thing that seems messy is the hazardous way Joonmyun tosses his clothes on chairs and the floor of his bedroom.

On one shelf outside of Joonmyun’s bedroom, there were pictures in frames of who Jongin assumes are family and friends, and baby photos of Joonmyun throughout his early childhood. Each photo of Joonmyun had his eyes curved into that contagious eye-smile he gets when he’s genuinely pleased, but he controls that smile a lot more now, hides it in his reluctant amusement rather than letting it show freely. Jongin wouldn’t go as far as to say that Joonmyun is fake, but Joonmyun certainly is guarded, and he often uses emotional tests on others in order to decide how honest he should be with them.

“Shower…I’m going to go shower,” Joonmyun mutters, more to himself than Jongin since he thinks Jongin is sleeping, as he tries to extract himself from the alpha’s arms. Jongin loosens his grip progressively so that Joonmyun doesn’t find out he’s awake, but he sits up as soon as he hears the water start running and waits for Joonmyun to come out of the bathroom.

The way Joonmyun flinches would be offensive, if Jongin didn’t already know how jumpy Joonmyun is about unwelcome surprises and confrontation. “I thought you were asleep,” Joonmyun says, rubbing at his hair with a towel. His bangs flop down right above his eyes. 

“I just woke up,” Jongin lies. “Can we talk?” He beckons Joonmyun to come closer.

“We are talking,” Joonmyun answers stubbornly. Instead of moving forward, he takes a step back.

“You know what I mean,” Jongin sighs. “Is this going to happen again? Do you want me to get you through your heats from now on?” He tries to maintain eye contact, but Joonmyun refuses to look at him directly and just shrugs.

“You can’t just call me over whenever you want and avoid the consequences afterwards, Joonmyun,” Jongin says, frustrated. All he wants is a simple conversation. Joonmyun can be so _selfish,_ always expecting Jongin to do his bidding and then shrinking back as soon as responsibility catches up with him. “What did you do for your heats before?”

“I took heat suppressants,” Joonmyun admits. He examines his nails carefully, and doesn’t say anything else.

Jongin sighs at Joonmyun’s purposeful obtuseness. “Why not this time?”

“It feels horrible,” Joonmyun says. “I couldn’t think properly, and I always had headaches... my whole body would feel numb for days.” Jongin has heard about the severe side effects of heat suppressants, but not in much detail. Although they’re inconvenient and dangerous to use, he knows many omegas rely on the medication to function normally, because they’d rather feel sick than lose control over their sexual impulses and their wolves.

“Why did you pick me? Out of all the people you know.”

“What?”

“Answer my question.”

Joonmyun shifts his body weight from one leg to the other. “Because you don’t really… demand anything from me in return, and… 

“And?" 

Joonmyun’s mouth forms a hard line, like he’s conflicted over whether to say it, whatever’s on the tip of his tongue. “Never mind.” 

A long pause settles over them. “Joonmyun, how do you feel about a relationship?” Jongin asks, and squeezes his eyes shut, because he’s putting himself out there again without knowing whether Joonmyun’s going to drop him or save him.  

“Uncomfortable,” Joonmyun says immediately. Jongin’s not even surprised, but his wolf whines and cries on the inside. When he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is Joonmyun’s face, and the misery written all over it as he struggles to gather his emotions and tie them up.  

Jongin doesn’t want to put both of them in this situation, but he’s tired of waiting for Joonmyun to understand himself while Jongin is already on his way to figuring out exactly how Joonmyun feels.   

“The truth is, you like me more than you’re willing to admit, right?” Jongin stands up to walk closer, and Joonmyun backs up, his heart rate increasing as the distance between them diminishes. Soon enough, Jongin has Joonmyun trapped and cornered against his desk.

“You’re… you’re wrong,” Joonmyun insists, putting his hand over his chest like the action will prevent Jongin from hearing his heartbeat.

It’s a fruitless gesture because Jongin doesn’t need to use Joonmyun’s heartbeat against him. He has weeks of Joonmyun soundlessly curled up next to him in bed, days of Joonmyun’s begrudged smile at his bad jokes, and moments of Joonmyun hiccupping when Jongin looks him in the eye as he sucks him off until Joonmyun comes.   

“You said yourself just now that I don’t demand things from you in return for my feelings. Even if I never made you say it, you bought tickets to an art exhibition with the intention of bringing me, not because you had extra tickets, not because you didn’t know who else to ask. You called me Jonginnie during sex, and you asked me to come to you today because you _knew_ I would take care of you. Isn’t that the case?”

Joonmyun opens his mouth, then closes it, unable to deny any of Jongin’s claims. “I’m scared, okay?” he says eventually. His eyes are bright and clear and vulnerable as he finally ( _finally!!!_ ) looks at Jongin without shying away.

“Of what?” Jongin is scared, too. He has a lot to lose by pushing Joonmyun to be honest. Joonmyun could reject him romantically or decide to cut off relations with him all together, but Jongin’s making them step out of both their comfort zones because if this doesn’t work out in the end, he doesn’t want to have any regrets looking back on it.

“So many things.” Joonmyun’s lip quivers as he releases a shaky exhale. “I’m terrified of the power you have over me... of making a mistake again just because of my emotions… of being irrational and nonsensical because love is never equally weighted. I wanted to stay safe.”

“Mistake?” Jongin tilts his head. “What do you mean?”

Joonmyun shakes his head.

Jongin takes Joonmyun’s hands in his own, as he says, “You’re so… afraid of being mine, Joonmyun, but you forget that I’m going to be yours too. I’m at your disposal, completely, and I want to be your definition of ‘safe.’ Isn’t that enough to risk the jump?”  

“Jumping is scary because you can never predict what will happen while you’re in mid-air,” Joonmyun says. He slips his hands out of Jongin’s.  “Empty promises don’t mean anything, and I don’t expect people to catch me anymore.”

“That’s a sad way to live,” Jongin says. “Don’t you think?” The possibility to move towards happiness is zero when you lack faith and only have expectations for sadness. Joonmyun lives in a greenhouse constructed of doubt and false defiance, pretending he’s strong when he’s actually shielding himself from everything he doesn’t want to face and preventing himself from getting any stronger. He blocks his eyes and ears from the world, hoping to keep out evil when he’ll end up keeping out the good, too. 

Joonmyun is irked. “You don’t get to say anything about the way I live. You don’t know me.” He says it with such conviction, but he forgets that it’s an unfair statement to make against Jongin, who’s always offered his open arms to catch Joonmyun in his moments of falter. He doesn’t realize how closely Jongin has watched him since the beginning, painstakingly learning where to step and where not to step with his words so that Joonmyun doesn’t ever have to be in unnecessary pain when they’re together.

“It’s true that I don’t know what made you so jaded or the reason your heart beats so fast whenever I bring up wanting a relationship with you,” Jongin says. “But… that doesn’t mean I don’t know you. It doesn’t mean my liking you is any less valid.”  

“I know that, but I still… I still _can’t_ ,” Joonmyun says, and his voice breaks.

“Why _not_?” Jongin asks. “I’m not looking to hold power over you, Joonmyun. You don’t have to become less than what you are right now in order to be with me. I don’t want that.”

“If you don’t want that… then what _do_ you want?” Joonmyun asks. His reaction is genuine confusion, and Jongin is angered to think of all the alphas or betas that must have approached Joonmyun with the sole intention of treating him as an object once they had his heart, like he was one tick mark of many on their bedposts.

Jongin imagines a day when Joonmyun will come home to him after work, and smile at him without restraint, without an invisible set of terms that Jongin’s signed but can’t read. He likes how unapologetic Joonmyun is about offending him if he wants his opinion heard, but he doesn’t like the momentary flash of fear he sees in Joonmyun, sometimes, when he thinks Jongin is going to take whatever he wants from his body without asking if Joonmyun’s okay with it.

Jongin wants Joonmyun in all the ways he has him right now and more. He wants… Joonmyun to _let him in_ , so that he can fill in all the cracks of Joonmyun’s armor and help him bravely face the things he’s most afraid of.   

“A chance,” Jongin finally answers. “Would that be too much?”  

Their eyes meet, and Joonmyun seems to be searching for something in Jongin’s face. Whatever it is, he must have found what he wants because he slowly places calm, tame hands on Jongin’s waist. “If that’s all you want, if… you don’t place too many expectations on me,” he says, “I think I could try.”

It’s a hard won victory after months of _pining,_ and Jongin wants to sob in relief because despite all the doubts that are holding Joonmyun back, at least he’s willing to try.

 

+

 

A little more than thirty hours pass before Joonmyun’s heat completely breaks. Jongin’s lost track of how many times they had sex, but he’s pleased, anyhow, by the way their scents have blended into each other’s.

He’s rubbing the heat soothing balm into Joonmyun’s skin, around his neck, shoulders and back, despite Joonmyun’s protests that he can do it himself.

“You can’t reach that well around your back, though,” Jongin argues, “and that’s where the most sensitive area is, right?” He remembers, faintly, reading the color coded diagrams that described the differing symptoms in heat cycles for omegas, betas, and alphas in high school. 

There’s a towel covering the top of Joonmyun’s head and part of his face, and he pulls it down so that he can turn to look at Jongin. “Most people don’t know that.” _Alphas, especially,_ is implied in his curious expression and raised eyebrow.

“Really?” Jongin says nervously. He feels like a frog who’s been pinned into stillness with the beam of a flashlight.

“Have you done this before?” Joonmyun asks. “Getting omegas through their heat?”

Not sure whether ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is a better answer, Jongin decides to go with the honest one. “No,” he says. “You were the first. Is that bad?”

“Not at all,” Joonmyun says, tone evasive. The smile on his face reminds Jongin of the first time they met, when Joonmyun had given him a look from across the bar that said he knew exactly who he was going home with that night. Jongin can feel arousal, familiar and demanding, crawl up his spine in anticipation.

Still smiling, Joonmyun plucks the jar of heat balm out of Jongin’s hands, placing it on the side before returning to meet Jongin’s parted lips with his own in a lazy, open mouthed kiss. He moves Jongin, laying him flat so that he can lie on top of him. Jongin likes the weight of Joonmyun’s body against his.

“I think I…” Joonmyun’s voice drops an octave in the middle of his sentence, “quite like being the first omega you’ve taken care of.” 

Jongin is _winded._ “Yeah? 

“Yeah,” Joonmyun says, with a laugh, and slides his hand downwards to palm Jongin’s dick.

 

+ 

 

Text from Oh Sehun (2:34 pm):

_Just got your text. Congratulations, loser. Your prince charming finally fell for your low quality!!! seduction techniques._

 

+

 

Jongin’s phone flashes _11:34_ at him when he presses the home button, as he taps his foot impatiently and waits for one of the elevator cabs to come down to the lobby. He’d just formally finished a project for a client’s new website earlier this morning, around nine, and was looking forward to having lunch with Joonmyun until Joonmyun had called to cancel. Something had come up, so the DELIRIUM team was forced to schedule an emergency meeting that would likely last through a majority of their lunch break. Hopefully Jongin hasn’t come too late to catch Joonmyun in his office before he leaves.     

Jongin knocks on the doorframe of Joonmyun’s office and rustles the paper bag in his hand when Joonmyun looks up.

“Jongin!” Joonmyun eyes widen. “Why are you here? I told you I couldn’t make it for lunch, right?”

“Yeah, I know, I got your message,” Jongin says, as Joonmyun gets out of his chair and walks towards him. “But I got you food anyway since you’ll just skip meals when you’re busy.”

“You made a trip to my workplace even though I cancelled on you,” Joonmyun says in an apologetic tone, taking the bag from Jongin. The pleased smile Jongin receives right after Joonmyun peeks inside makes all his effort worthwhile. “Thank you, Jongin. This is my favorite.”

“That’s why I got it for you,” Jongin says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I hope the meeting goes well.”

“Me too. Thanks for doing this. I’ll call you later?” says Joonmyun, whose ears are turning pink. When Jongin looks behind them, he realizes several of Joonmyun’s colleagues had been peering at the two of them curiously, but they all start shuffling papers loudly and typing on their computers to appear focused on work.

Jongin is pleased. The selfish part of him wanted this kind of reaction, because Joonmyun is his and he wants to establish that to as many people as possible, but the rational side of him knows to prioritize Joonmyun’s uneasiness about revealing their relationship to too many people at once.

“Sorry for intruding, I’ll leave so you don’t combust out of embarrassment,” Jongin says, not feeling sorry at all. “Enjoy your food!”  

There’s a mass rush of footsteps once Jongin steps out into the hallway, and he can hear Joonmyun’s employees asking about who Jongin is and why he’s here again after “last time.” He doesn’t think much of it and expects Joonmyun to remain tightlipped, until Joonmyun answers, casually, that Jongin is his boyfriend.

The elevator is empty when Jongin steps inside, leaving him to freely get flustered by himself and squat so that he can bury his face in his knees. It’s too bad that he can’t march back into Joonmyun’s office and kiss him silly.

 

+

 

Jongin is concentrating on cooking omelets for Joonmyun’s black hole of a stomach when his phone starts vibrating loudly on the table. He calls out to Joonmyun, who was thumbing through proofs in the living room, the last time Jongin checked. “Can you pick that up for me?”

“Sure,” Joonmyun answers, and walks over. “Hello?”

His expression changes when the voice on the other line speaks, but Jongin misses it because he’s busy sliding the omelet out of the pan and onto a plate, with two other omelets. By the time he looks at Joonmyun, his boyfriend’s face is neutral as he says, “I’ll hand the phone over to him. Yes, no problem.”

Jongin mouths _thanks_ at Joonmyun before speaking into the receiver. Caller ID reveals it’s Secretary Park, one of the attorneys working for his sister. For a few seconds he worries about what Joonmyun might have heard in greeting, but his attention is quickly diverted to what Secretary Park is saying. “Young master, I’m calling you briefly to let you know about the ceremony this Friday. Your sister expects you to attend.”

“‘Jongin,’ is fine,” Jongin says, grimacing at the thought of the company party. He’s grown up with all sorts of obligations like this, but he’s been able to get out of a lot more events after he started living on his own. However, the excuse of being busy with work only goes so far, and this time around Jongin had made a futile attempt at the strategy of laying low and pretending no one was reminding him to go. It was working well, until Jungah’s impeccable memory caught up and she followed through with tracking him down, as usual.

“Will you be attending, Jongin?” Secretary Park asks. From the tone of his voice, it’s obvious that he’s holding in a chuckle. If they were talking face to face, Jongin would cross his arms and glare, but he can only sigh deeply.

“You tell me. Do I have a choice?”

“I’m afraid you have little say in the matter,” Secretary Park replies, and doesn’t hold in the laugh this time. “I will let you know more details later on this week. Goodbye for now.”

Jongin sighs once more as the call ends, glancing momentarily at Joonmyun, whose facial expression still doesn’t reveal much surprise or suspicion.

“What was it about?” Joonmyun asks.

“My sister wants me to go to her company event on Friday,” Jongin says. “It’s such a bother… is something wrong?” In the middle of Jongin talking, Joonmyun has started worrying at his lower lip.

“No, nothing,” Joonmyun says, filling the awkwardness with a smile, but it’s clear that his easy going attitude is only a front because his eyes are unfocused. Distracted, like he’s not really part of the conversation even though he’s responding at the right times. Jongin tries to backtrack to see if he offended Joonmyun in some way, but can’t come up with anything he might have said or done. He attributes it to work. Joonmyun has a tendency to get sucked into tunnel mentality when there’s an issue he hasn’t completely resolved yet.

He stands there for a few seconds, motionless, before remembering that they were going to eat. “…Want to eat now?” Jongin asks, hoping Joonmyun’s odd mood will pass over eventually. “I’m done cooking.”

“Yeah, thank you.”    

Joonmyun is halfway through his omelet when Jongin realizes that beyond mentioning where his parents lived, Joonmyun hasn’t talked very much about his family. Maybe that’s what had set off his strange mood. “You said your family lives in Busan, right?”

“My parents do. My brother lives in Apgujeong,” Joonmyun says. “Why do you ask?”

He sounds cautious, but Joonmyun isn’t the type of person to keep talking about a topic he wants to avoid, so it’s a yellow light for Jongin to proceed as long as he does so with caution. “I was wondering how your relationship with them was, since you don’t really bring them up in conversation,” Jongin says.

“My relationship with my family? It’s okay,” Joonmyun says, although it’s in the same tone that he used that one day Jongin had asked him if the rice was too hard and he’d been too polite to say yes.

“How often do you see them?”

“Not very often,” Joonmyun says. “I get caught up in work on the magazine, a lot, so I don’t have that many free days besides an occasional weekend. I go home for Chuseok and Seollal if I can make it.”

He looks lost, and Jongin can’t help but wonder what else Joonmyun isn’t telling him because in his experience, people with _okay_ relationships are supposed to see each other more than twice a year. “What about your brother? He lives relatively close.”

“I don’t… particularly get along with my brother,” Joonmyun says. He laughs, but it goes flat, and doesn’t sound pleasant at all. “The most interaction I need with him is what I get when we both visit home, and even that’s a little too much for my liking.”

“Oh.”

“Are you close with your sister?” Joonmyun asks, glancing up at Jongin and then looking down again quickly, like the knowledge that Jongin is staring at him burns him. Jongin lets him deflect because he knows not to push.

“I guess we’re pretty standard for siblings,” Jongin says. “We screamed and fought a lot with each other when we were children, but now we somewhat get along.”

“That’s good,” Joonmyun says. “…My brother and I started off the same way, I guess, quibbling over small things. But… somewhere in the middle, I think we forgot that the arguments were supposed to be a part of growing up, and our differences grew so large that they became what defined our relationship.”

 

+

 

One of the main reasons Joonmyun has let Jongin get so close is because Jongin doesn’t lie. He’ll do dumb things… play harmless pranks, like plastering three hundred post it notes to the side of Joonmyun’s car with a giant heart and Christmas tree drawn through all of them, but he’s generally transparent about what he’s thinking and what he wants. Or at least, that’s Joonmyun’s dominating impression of him, until he sees the invitation to Jongin’s sister’s “company event.”

He’d pulled it out of Jongin’s daily pile of mail because it looked different from the mail Jongin usually receives, and he’s right. The envelope is thick and bordered and looks _expensive._ When he flips the envelope over to the front, Joonmyun nearly drops it in shock.  

_Inauguration Ceremony for CEO Jungah Kim_

Once he’s regained his composure, he quickly places it in between some advertisements and bills so that Jongin won’t realize he’s seen it, and tries to ignore the increasing discomfort and fear building up in his stomach.

“Anything particular in the mail?” Jongin asks, fresh out of the shower.

“Just bills and coupons,” Joonmyun says. His hands are shaking, and he presses them on the table so they’ll stay still. “I didn’t look that closely.”

Jongin smiles at him with an “okay” before turning on the hairdryer. Joonmyun has always liked the way Jongin smiles, radiant and uncalculated from the first time they met, but now… he’s afraid of what it contains underneath.

_“You must think I look like a rich kid that doesn’t take anything seriously, right?”_

A joke that had been real. Joonmyun begins to comb through everything Jongin’s told him, and grows increasingly troubled when he realizes he has no way of sorting them into truths and lies. 

Who is this Jongin?

 

+

 

Confrontation is difficult for Joonmyun. As a child, he’d been mild-mannered and avoided conflicts at all cost, and that trait had followed him from his adolescent years into his adulthood. He’s been criticized multiple times by friends for his lack of communication, but he’s probably better off keeping his dissatisfactions to himself than starting an argument and causing irreversible damage to a relationship. The few times he’d actually attempted to confront someone all ended with Joonmyun falling silent or tearing up. He doesn’t need or want Jongin to see that side of him.  

With his suspicions about Jongin raised but not confirmed, Joonmyun enters a weird state of awareness where he’s questioning everything the alpha has revealed about himself, while Jongin still thinks their relationship is sailing smoothly. To avoid being caught, Joonmyun tries his best to act normal, which is why he ends up being roped into going to an amusement park with Jongin for Jongin’s birthday.

“Joonmyun,” Jongin says, stretching out the _–myun_ much longer than he needs to. Joonmyun is tempted to scoot a little closer to him and pinch his arm. “My birthday is coming soon. Can you come to Lotte World with me?”

“Aren’t you a little old for that?” Joonmyun asks, grimacing at the amount of sparkle Jongin is getting in his eyes just by thinking about roller coasters. Joonmyun’s never particularly liked roller coasters. His parents didn’t take him to the amusement park very often when he was younger, which turned out for the better since Joonmyun soon realized on his first trip there that he got little joy from being whisked around in the sky and more headaches than anything else. 

“Please? It’ll be my treat,” Jongin wheedles, kissing Joonmyun on the cheek. “Consider it my birthday present.”

“What a cheater,” Joonmyun says, but with no heat, because he knows it’s pointless trying to win against Jongin this time.

 

+

 

Five years have passed since Joonmyun last came to Lotte World, and he decides resolutely, as he did back when he was twenty three, that he does not like amusement parks. Even if he likes children, there’s a limit to how much noise he can take. Children are running around screaming their heads off and teenagers are obnoxiously loud, pooling together in large groups and taking up excessive amounts of space.

Jongin, on the other hand, is reading the pamphlet they got at the admissions window with an abnormal amount of enthusiasm. He’s oblivious to the chaos going on around him, and seems to be much more interested in reveling at the different rides they’ll be trying out today. If Joonmyun wasn’t so consumed by his questions surrounding Jongin’s real identity, he would think Jongin is… cute.

Joonmyun clutches his backpack straps a little harder. It’s going to be a long day. “Have you never been here before?” he asks.  

“I have,” Jongin says, “but this is the first time that I’m not being rushed to fit someone else’s schedule.” He walks forward a few feet, referring to the map, and looks in all directions.   

“Let’s try all the rides on Magic Island, and then head to the adventure floors!” he says, then pouts, like a terrible conundrum has appeared. “But I want to get cute headbands for us, too.”

“We can get those after the rides?” Joonmyun offers, in a subtle attempt to preserve his dignity. If he has no choice but to wear something dumb on his head, wearing it for less time beats wearing it from the very beginning of their trip.

The sly grin on Jongin’s face is a clear sign that Joonmyun should have kept his mouth closed. It might have given him better results. Instead, he’s stuck with regretting his words as Jongin pulls him in the direction of the closest gift shop. “No, let’s get them now. I want to see you wear a big bow all day!”

One big red bow and a frog headband later, Jongin is smiling down at Joonmyun with barely controlled mirth as he admires his purchase and more importantly, Joonmyun’s misery.

As soon as they had entered the small shop, Jongin had zoned in on the reddest, shiniest, most excessively sequin-filled bow headband to buy for Joonmyun. It’s as big as Joonmyun’s face, and the size would have been the only atrocity if not for the horrible color and superfluous glitter level. He does not smile when Jongin snaps twenty pictures in a row. He won’t give signs of happiness where it’s not present.

“Why’d you pick a frog,” he asks dully, because he’s cranky and wants to pick a fight with Jongin. The headband Jongin bought himself is small, non-embarrassing, and reasonably sized. Joonmyun hates everything.

“I _love_ frogs,” Jongin says, like Joonmyun had threatened to kill all the frogs in the world instead of simply asking why Jongin chose a frog-themed headband. His eyebrows tilt downward, which makes him look like a sad Bassett hound, and Joonmyun laughs at how offended he looks. He forgets about his own, boxed up worries for a blissful moment. It’s his first victory of the day against Jongin, and he can only hope for more.  

“Anyways,” Jongin says, when they’re walking towards Magical Island, “you have to wear that all day whenever we’re not on rides.”

Joonmyun just scowls back at him.

He gradually discovers, with some annoyance, that the rides aren’t so horrible that he’d never come back to Lotte World. His health has improved since the last time he came here, so dizziness is no longer an issue, and Jongin’s excitement is contagious even to the most indifferent of people. Joonmyun catches himself having a good time and stomps down the stupid grin on his face before Jongin can pick up on it.   

“How come you don’t scream on roller coasters?” Jongin asks after they get off of French Revolution, and Joonmyun snorts in response.

He gently swipes at Jongin’s frog headband so that it slips down, barring Jongin’s eyesight. Jongin cries out, hands flying immediately to his face. “Why do _you?_ ” Joonmyun asks.

Jongin makes an indignant squawk again as he takes the headband off and pats down his hair before putting it back on. “So mean, Joonmyun,” he complains, but as an offering of an olive branch, he asks, “Wanna stop for lunch now?”

 

+

 

Every time they pass by any pop up shack selling toys, Joonmyun keeps eyeing an orange dinosaur with bugged out eye-whites and big nostrils, but he never says anything about wanting it. Even so, his pout whenever they leave each shack doesn’t go unnoticed by Jongin.

That’s why, when Joonmyun says he needs to use the restroom, Jongin takes a chance and sprints back to the previous cart they’d gone to. The seller recognizes him from when he and Joonmyun were there twenty minutes ago. “Hello,” the elderly man says. “Did you want to buy something?”

“Yes,” Jongin says, trying to catch his breath back. “One of the orange dinosaurs, please.”

“That’ll be 35,000 won,” the man says, turning around to sift through the pile of orange dinosaurs. “How about this one? It’s the best looking out of this selection.”

He holds up one with evenly sewed eyes and balanced features. The buck teeth and wide smile make Jongin want to laugh, and he hopes Joonmyun has the same reaction when he sees the dinosaur pop up some time in his future.

“That one’s good, thank you,” Jongin says, handing over the exact amount in bills. After the man puts it in a bright yellow bag, Jongin thanks him again and hurriedly puts the plush toy in his backpack.

Joonmyun is on his phone just outside of the restrooms when Jongin reaches him. “Where have you been?” he asks.

“Sorry. Did I make you wait long?”

“No, I’ve only been waiting for a couple of minutes. I figured you had something to do, so,” says Joonmyun. “What were you doing?”

“There was a little boy who lost his mom, and I walked him over to the help center where they alert parents about wandering children,” Jongin says, chuckling nervously as he scratches the back of his neck. Even if he wasn’t off doing anything bad, he still feels sheepish about the white lie.

“I see.” Joonmyun slides his phone into his back pocket, indicating his full attention is on Jongin now. “Is there anything else you want to do?” Jongin wants badly to ruffle Joonmyun’s hair, but he’s still wearing the red bow and Jongin doesn’t want to sacrifice such a valuable sight for a temporary impulse.

“Nope,” Jongin replies. They’ve covered all of the rides Jongin wanted to try out and eaten ridiculously unhealthy carnival snacks. In the midst of mentally reviewing his amusement park checklist, Jongin realizes he almost forgot the most important thing. “Let’s take a picture together, Joonmyun, before it gets dark.”

“As in… a selfie? We have plenty of those, Jongin.”

“No, silly,” Jongin says, and pretends he doesn’t see the way Joonmyun visibly bristles at the term. “I’ll get someone to take it for us.”

“How embarrassing,” Joonmyun says to nobody as Jongin goes off to find someone suitable. He comes back with a young girl that looks like she’s in high school, who’s agreed to snap a quick picture for them.

“Smile!” Jongin says, hugging Joonmyun in close with one hand and forming a V in front of his face with the other as the girl holds Jongin’s phone up.

“1, 2, 3,” the girl says, and pauses, taking several shots. “Here you go. Hopefully they aren’t blurry.”

Joonmyun moves away from him as soon as the photo is done, but Jongin is too busy thanking the girl to think about what it means. He takes the phone from her, thanking her again, and she nods shyly before going back to her friend who’s waiting a few feet away.

“My my, Joonmyun, so handsome,” he coos, pleased with how the photos turned out. Joonmyun turns away before Jongin can show him, heading towards the park exit, and Jongin follows along silently without putting up much of a fight.

For most of the day, even if he’d put on a face of long suffering, Joonmyun had been happy to go along with Jongin’s every whim, but now he’s starting to give Jongin an obvious cold shoulder as their day together winds down to an end. Jongin knows something’s wrong, he just doesn’t know what, and the inability to figure it out eats away at him.

 

+

 

“Happy birthday,” Joonmyun says, when Jongin is about to get out of the car.

“Thank you, Joonmyun.” Jongin’s smile is warm and comforting, and Joonmyun reminds himself sternly that he can’t look forward to that smile for much longer. He doesn’t try to memorize it, either. “Do you want to sleep over today?”

Jongin sounds so hopeful. It’s torturous, to say no to someone who doesn’t want very much to be happy, just Joonmyun’s attention. Except that Joonmyun doesn’t _know_ this Jongin, not really, and he can’t continue to act like everything is okay when it’s not.

Someone had smiled at him just as sweetly in the past, and thanks to him, Joonmyun had ended up with a blackened heart and a lack of sympathy for others.

“No. I have something to do tomorrow,” Joonmyun says, smiling to lessen the blow. Alone time is what he needs right now. He’s confused, mind a blur of scribbles and arrows leading nowhere, and staying with Jongin isn’t going to make thinking any easier.

Because it’s unusual for him to say no to Jongin, Joonmyun makes sure not to look at the younger man too intently. It’s quiet enough, in front of Jongin’s apartment building, that Jongin can easily hear Joonmyun’s lie in the way his heartbeat quickens.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you later?” Jongin says, uncertainly, as his voice loses its steadiness in the end. He looks so fragile, especially with the frog headband still on his head, like he’s a five year old who’s wandered off too far from his mother and can’t find his way back home. Most of the time his ego is pumped up with enough air to keep him confident, but Joonmyun’s realized that he’s capable of sending Jongin’s self-esteem tumbling with just one word. He pretends that it’s not happening right now.

“Yes,” Joonmyun says, eventually. He does not touch Jongin because he might lose the resolve to go home by himself. “Goodnight, Jongin. I’ll leave when you go inside.”

Back in his own apartment, Joonmyun drops his bag by the couch and heads straight for his room. He changes from jeans into an old pair of athletic pants, then kicks off his socks in just the right angle so they land in his hamper.

The clock by his dresser reads a neon green 9:39 by the time he’s brushed his teeth and tucked himself into bed, limbs rolled up into the blanket as if he’s forming a cocoon. Normally he’d fall asleep within minutes like this, but he’s plagued by thoughts of Jongin which makes it hard for him to relax at all.

He’s had a lot of… experience with alphas, each and every one pretty much insufferable in their need to shine and dominate over whichever omega is in their vicinity. Joonmyun may have been a timid omega once, but the expectation of being accommodating and understanding while wanting nothing for himself was too suffocating, so he dropped it. He lived how he wanted, took what he wanted from who he wished, and spit back out whatever he didn’t feel like keeping. Some alphas liked the challenge, seeing if they could be the one to break him down into a needy, whiny mess, but none of them ever saw the end of their bets because he always ended up being too sharp, too feral for them to tame even in the wildest of their dreams.

Jongin doesn’t radiate that type of aura. The alpha is pushy, but that trait seems to come from a need for attention from people he likes rather than a desire for power over others. He has a strong urge to please Joonmyun, and constantly drowns him in praise and acts of kindness like he’s afraid Joonmyun might disappear without them.

(Joonmyun might… disappear even with them. He’s grown much fonder of Jongin than he should have.) 

In a different time, Joonmyun would be an eager and hopeless romantic who loves recklessly and knows no betrayal. He’d have let Jongin succeed in gaining his affections from the beginning and held nothing back. Because love wasn’t supposed to have boundaries, he’d dismiss their differences without any hesitation.

But in reality, Joonmyun is a man who’d willingly live in a greenhouse for the rest of his life if it meant he would never again be exposed to the temptation, the poison of an unsound alpha that nearly ruined him. Some risks are worth it, Joonmyun thinks, but others have the power to cause him so much remorse and bitterness that he struggles to remember why they seemed sweet in the first place.

His colleagues sometimes look at him like they think he’s made of steel and volcanic rock, instead of flesh and blood and bones. He doesn’t blame them. Work has been his top priority for the last two years, taking up all the space and fragmented debris in his heart that Seungjun had cleared out with dynamite the day he broke up with Joonmyun.

What his coworkers don’t realize is that he may be rough on the edges, he may be overly reserved, but Joonmyun is definitely not heartless. Jongin’s feelings have never been… unreciprocated, and Joonmyun regrets how deeply he’s let himself fall now that he may be in danger of repeating history.  

Images flash through Joonmyun’s mind, of Seungjun’s mother screaming and throwing glass, and Seungjun’s father begging her to calm down. Years have passed, but he never has trouble recalling how he felt, what was said to him back then. Joonmyun still has a scar, a small, curved streak across his right hand that’s barely faded, from one of the shards that had cut him that day. For him, it serves as a reminder that he shouldn’t be stepping into places where he doesn’t belong and that Jongin, too, is someone he can’t have. Joonmyun promises himself, as he starts to doze, that he’ll step back into the greenhouse and let go of his greed for a happiness he can’t hold on to.

 

+

 

The weather matches Joonmyun’s mood. Gray, cloudy, with not a glimpse of blue in sight. He watches idly, as a bird flies past before he sighs and shakes his head for the fifth time to try and focus.

“Is something wrong?” One of the new interns, Park Sooyoung, is watching Joonmyun with a worried look after she’s dropped off articles for him to approve.

Joonmyun continues to stare past her for a few seconds until he processes her question. “No, no, nothing’s wrong,” he says sheepishly. “Thank you for asking.” Her face says she doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t question it and leaves his office after bowing.

Joonmyun touches his face self-consciously, wondering what it is that made his worries so apparent. The chime of a bell turns his head to look at his phone, and it’s a new text message from Jongin, asking if Joonmyun’s free tonight, after work.

 _Sorry, I have to work overtime,_ Joonmyun types and sends, despite knowing he’ll get off early today. He ignores the guilt that weaves its way through his abdomen and wraps its thin fingers around his throat, threatening to suffocate him. 

 

+

 

It’s not difficult to fall back into his old routine. Joonmyun has had years of experience to become an expert at ignoring things if he wants them to disappear. He’d done it when he was six and refused to eat more than two pieces of okra, and he’s doing it now at the age of twenty eight, blacking out any positive feelings he has towards Jongin to make the pain of their inevitable separation more bearable when it really happens. 

 _5 missed calls from Jongin, 3 new texts from Jongin._ Joonmyun draws the pattern for his passcode and checks his messages.

_Jongin: Joonmyun are you okay why aren’t you picking up my calls_

_Jongin: Joonmyun?? ??? did I do something wrong_

_Jongin: please just talk to me._

The screen goes black as Joonmyun locks his phone and tosses it onto the other side of his bed. He lies down, holding his hand straight out above him and looks at the scar on it.

For a moment that had been stretched too long to be true, he had led himself into believing he could have nice things.  

 

+

 

“He’s avoiding me,” Jongin tells Sehun, running his hands through his unkempt hair. “Again.”    

Sehun sets down his phone and starts poking at his salad, placing stray corn kernels on the side in a neat line. “What? I thought you guys finally started dating.”

“Me, too,” Jongin says. “He suddenly stopped contacting me, though.”

“Is he just busy?”

Jongin shakes his head. “Even at his busiest, he’ll reply to my texts and return my calls as long as he has his phone on him. It’s been over three days.”

“Have you gone over to his place to check on him?”

“Yeah, twice. But he wasn’t at home,” Jongin says. After a short pause, he adds, “I think he went out on purpose.” At some point, Jongin’s noticed that Joonmyun likes to finish all his errands during the day, so it doesn’t really make sense for him to be out in the evening two days in a row.  

“Damn,” Sehun says. “That’s tough.”

In the midst of chewing, his face darkens abruptly, and he says, “Jongin, did he find out who you are?”

“What? No, I don’t… think so,” Jongin replies. “I’ve been careful not to reveal anything.” The only time Jongin could have caused any suspicion on Joonmyun’s part was a few weeks ago when Secretary Park called him on his cell phone, but Joonmyun hadn’t said anything afterwards. Jongin’s still not sure what Secretary Park initially said to Joonmyun, and asking Joonmyun directly would only expose him even further.

Sehun raises an eyebrow. “Is Joonmyun someone who will take your word over everything else?”

“Not always. If he wants to know something, he’ll find out himself rather than ask someone else for help,” Jongin says, feeling his skin go cold as he realizes Joonmyun could have easily done research to get a background check on him. A rock has dropped in his stomach and is pulling all of his internal organs down with it.

Sehun gives a wry laugh. “You’re definitely screwed.”

“Thanks for letting me know, Sehun, because I wasn’t aware at all or anything,” Jongin says, mortified for life, and buries his face in his hands.

 

+

 

Jongin’s phone beeps, and he grabs it hurriedly to check what the notification is for.

_New text message from Joonmyun._

_Joonmyun: Let’s break up. I’m tired of this._

 

+

 

It doesn’t come as a surprise that with a combination of Jongin’s weak immune system, the transition into true January weather, and the stress on Jongin from worrying about Joonmyun’s unexplainable behavior, Jongin gets sick. 

Although he had to cancel a meeting today with a client for the design of their company’s app, he’d been lucky that Seungkwan’s developed a fondness for him and his work, because the middle-aged man had simply asked for a postponement in their discussion instead of cancelling the deal entirely. Once business has been sorted out, Jongin dedicates the rest of the day to moping in bed under the covers, forcing himself to get up and drink water periodically.

In his drowsy state of suffering, Jongin forgets to filter his words and texts Joonmyun whatever he’s thinking without proofreading the message, then drops his phone somewhere on the ground next to his bed. The impulsive action is forgotten in less time than it took Jongin to type the message and hit ‘send.’ 

Somewhere in between cotton candy clouds pressing down on his head and waking up with a head-splitting migraine, Jongin registers that his phone has been beeping several times throughout the afternoon, which means a multitude of messages have come in. He reaches around randomly on the floor until he touches the smooth, flat surface of his phone and brings it up to his face.

_(2:47 pm) Joonmyun: what do you mean you’re dying are you alright_

_(3:33 pm) Joonmyun: Jongin???????_

_(3:48 pm) Sehun: take it easy man. lemme kno if u want me 2 bring u chcken later_

_(5:03 pm) Joonmyun: Kim Jongin-ssi~~ tell me if ur ok or im going to fucking kill u. u hear me :)_

The last message sends Jongin kicking his comforter away and scrolling up through his conversation with Joonmyun to see what got Joonmyun’s temper flaring so violently.

_(2:20 pm) Jongin: joooooooonmyunnn ilysm and i miss u but im dyingngngng help..why wont you come see me or talk to me or save me? ? joonmyunnnn_

This must be a dream. A nightmare, because it’s terrifying. Horrified, Jongin locks his phone in the hopes that it’ll make his message disappear, along with Joonmyun’s anger. After he counts to ten, he unlocks his phone to check his messages again. To his dismay, the message is still there, shining green in all its glory with the obvious lack of control over emotions _and_ grammar. Jongin barely has time to consider death by Joonmyun’s hands or by his own before the doorbell is ringing and he has to get out of bed. It’s a little bit of a struggle because his feet aren’t working the way he wants them to, but he eventually stumbles with some efficiency and gets to his destination.

The monitor screen shows a grumpy Joonmyun in front of Jongin’s door, thick brows furrowed as he presses the doorbell multiple times. It would be endearing if Jongin wasn’t so embarrassed, not to mention they haven’t seen each other in person since Joonmyun started avoiding him and broke up with him over text. Unable to think of a way to escape, Jongin leaves his dignity behind and just opens the door. 

“What do you mean you’re dying?” is the first thing Joonmyun says to him, lips curled back in a half snarl as he pushes his way into the living room, and lets go of the plastic bags in his hands to take off his coat. His usual scent is dominated by a mixture of anger and anxiety, but they seem to be fading now that he’s confirmed Jongin’s alive and (relatively) well.    

Jongin flushes as he scrambles for words in his mostly blank mind. “Joonmyun, sorry, I didn’t mean to-“

“I was so worried,” Joonmyun mumbles. He’s not looking at Jongin when he says it. Instead, he’s focused his gaze at the ground while he’s rummaging through the plastic bags he’s brought. “And then you didn’t respond after that. What was I supposed to think?”

“I just passed out, that’s all,” Jongin starts, effectively scaring Joonmyun again.

“You _passed out,_ Jongin?”

“No, no, I mean I just fell asleep for a few hours,” Jongin explains hastily. “I’m sorry for the unnecessarily alarming message, I don’t have much of a brain to mouth filter when I’m sick.”

Joonmyun is silent as he takes out package after package, lining them up methodically on Jongin’s coffee table. “This is a common herbal medicine used for colds. The second one is for sore throats. This one is for relieving excessive coughing, and these are just cough drops. They’re only sweet for the first minute, but they work well,” he says, pointing to each container in the order he talks about them. When he’s done, he looks up at Jongin expectantly to see if he’s been listening.

Jongin’s wolf is half crying about how wonderfully domestic Joonmyun’s being, but the human side of Jongin has trouble processing this kindness when Joonmyun broke up with him so coldly just two days ago.

“Why are you here if we broke up? I thought you didn’t want to see me anymore,” Jongin says, because his brain is stupid and makes stupid jumps and forgets to be grateful. He wouldn’t be surprised if Joonmyun decides to strangle him, but Joonmyun just silences him with a glare instead. 

“That’s not a conversation I want to have with you right now. You should worry about getting better first,” Joonmyun says. Even so, the sharpness in his speech softens, and Jongin has a strong desire to rub his face in the omega’s shirt for comfort. 

“You’re the reason I got sick in the first place,” Jongin complains, sniffling unattractively. His nasal cavity is sore and it sucks, that he looks a mess in front of the person he likes most. “I keep thinking about you and consequently forget to take care of myself.”

Ignoring his comment, Joonmyun takes a pack of disposable face masks, ripping it open and picking out a face mask by the ear loops. He places his hands on Jongin’s waist and nudges him in the direction of the bedroom. “Go back to bed. Don’t overexert yourself.”

“I’m not using that much energy. I may be sick, but I’m still plenty capable of… things,” Jongin says, waving his arm around to prove his point. He ends up slamming it on the doorframe out of carelessness and hisses in pain, pouting when Joonmyun’s amused chuckle fills the room.

“It’s the first time I’m hearing you laugh so barbarically and the reason is because I got injured,” he whines. His voice crackles. “You’re a demon.”

Joonmyun just hums in total agreement as he all but shoves Jongin under the blankets, forcefully tucking the comforter up to Jongin’s chin and placing the facemask over Jongin’s mouth and nose. “Your nose will get better if you keep it warm like this,” he says.

They just stare at each other for a while, Joonmyun’s gaze unwavering while Jongin’s gradually fades. Joonmyun’s scent is convoluted with too many emotions for Jongin to interpret how he’s feeling accurately, and Jongin’s head is pounding, making it even more difficult than usual. “Will you be here when I wake up?” he asks, unable to hold in a yawn.

“Will I?” Joonmyun asks back, but his words are always contradicting his actions, and gentle fingers card through Jongin’s hair, sweeping at his slightly damp bangs so they don’t stick to his forehead. He doesn’t seem particularly eager to leave.

Jongin’s mouth and throat are dry. He always forgets to buy himself a dehumidifier for when he’s sick, but the thought soon becomes lost in a sea of others as he gets lulled into sleep by Joonmyun’s delicate touch.  

 

+

 

Sometime after 10 pm, Jongin wakes up, temples still a little achy but he’s no longer feels like there’s clay stacked on top of his head. The heater has probably been turned up too high because his throat feels sore. Once he recalls the day’s earlier events, he tumbles into the living room noisily, slippers not even properly on his feet as he searches for signs that Joonmyun’s still here.

It’s hard to describe Jongin’s happiness when he sees Joonmyun napping on his couch. The closest description is maybe that his heart squeezes in on itself, as if it can’t decide whether to expand or contract and is trying to do both simultaneously. Joonmyun’s taken one of Jongin’s fleece blankets, the pink one with a white heart pattern dotted throughout the fabric, and he’s curled up in fetal position with it covering his legs.

Joonmyun stirs at the new presence in the living room, being a slight sleeper, and he rubs his eyes groggily as he regains his senses.

“You’re here,” Jongin says, and Joonmyun snorts.

“That is a correct statement,” Joonmyun replies, standing up. “Are you feeling better?”

“Somewhat. I’m hungry.” Jongin pats at his stomach, glancing hopefully through his bangs at Joonmyun. “Do you have food for me?” Frankly, there’s more important information he wants to find out, like why Joonmyun is willing to spend so much time taking care of him right now when he dumped Jongin days ago through a measly text. Timing is important, however, so he holds back from asking recklessly because Joonmyun is a small animal that bites and causes irreversible damage if poked too many times.

“No,” Joonmyun says, even as he takes out several fruits from the plastic bags he brought earlier and heads for Jongin’s kitchen like it’s his own home. (To be honest, Jongin likes the way Joonmyun takes charge sometimes).

“Where’s your cutting board?” Joonmyun asks. Jongin points to the correct drawer, and Joonmyun takes it out, bring it to the dining table along with a peeler and a knife.

Jongin sits down adjacent to him and rests his head in his arms as he watches Joonmyun peel two apples. Joonmyun is meticulous, making sure the blade stays horizontal in order to create a perfect, spiral like peel from each apple. Jongin probably shouldn’t be this mesmerized by the way someone serves fruit, but he is. He’s interested in and amazed at every part of Joonmyun, even the sides Joonmyun tries to suppress.  

Some people might be scared of how unpredictable the omega is, with his sporadic, unexpected shifts in attitude and darker, seemingly infinite layers underneath the face he shows to the world. Others may want to dominate him, box him in, if they fear his power and more importantly, the way he depends on nothing and no one but himself.

Jongin, however, is only more and more enamored at every new interaction with Joonmyun, because Joonmyun’s maze of a mind is thrilling and beautiful to see. It keeps transforming, walls shifting to create a new path of escape every time Jongin thinks he’s got Joonmyun figured out. By now, he’s accepted that he’ll probably be stuck inside for a long, long time, and he just wants to keep watching the metamorphosis for as long as Joonmyun will let him.

“What are you staring at me for?” Joonmyun asks, shoving a slice of apple into Jongin’s mouth. It’s sweet, and crunchy.

“Nothing,” Jongin says, once he chews and swallows, and he smiles to himself secretively.

 

\+  

 

In the back of his mind, Jongin supposes he knew this was going to happen. Joonmyun’s beautiful and kind and warm, but he can also be unbearably cruel, stepping on whoever’s heart he wishes when he deems it necessary.

Jongin silently watches him slip on his shoes hurriedly and gather his belongings together, and waits until Joonmyun’s hand is on the doorknob before he speaks. “Where are you going?” he asks.

“Home,” Joonmyun says, turning around after he flinches at the sound of Jongin’s voice. “I’m tired.” He does look tired, and Jongin feels sorry because he knows Joonmyun’s fatigue is from watching over him, but this isn’t the time for him to be polite and back off. Joonmyun knows how to guilt-trip people into doing what he wants, but Jongin knows how to handle people who want to manipulate him.  

“You can rest here,” he says, and Joonmyun hesitates. When he doesn’t move, Jongin pleads, “Don’t run away from me.” 

Joonmyun sighs. “I think I like it better when you’re sick,” he remarks dryly, taking off his shoes and stepping back into the living room. “You’re a lot worse at persuading and far less demanding.” He sits down on the couch, elbows resting on his thighs as he looks up at Jongin.

“Do you want to sit?”

“No,” Jongin says, crossing his arms. He won’t be able to focus if Joonmyun is too close to him.

Joonmyun shrugs. “Okay.”   

Jongin rolls his bottom lip under his teeth, and clasps his hands together to stop their shaking. He wonders, if he should deliver the blow softer or be straightforward with his anger. Recalling the way Joonmyun has treated him, after a day that was supposed to end happily, makes the decision easier.

“Aren’t you going to explain? You disappear for three days straight, ignoring my calls, messages, and then you text me that we’re over?” he says. “That’s fucked up.” It’s not fair. He’s always… given Joonmyun the space he needed when he didn’t want to talk about something, and now Joonmyun is acting like he never owed Jongin an explanation in the first place. Irritation sits low in Jongin’s belly as he waits for Joonmyun’s response.

Joonmyun is silent, face pained. The same expression is probably reflected across Jongin’s face.

“Why did you break up with me?” Jongin hates how shrill his voice is, but he can’t control it. He was so… close to earning Joonmyun’s trust and love, and now he’s wondering whether he had a chance to begin with, whether it’s worth all of this trouble.  

Joonmyun’s jaw, even from this distance, looks tense. Like it’ll shatter if Jongin touches it. “I can’t be in a relationship with you anymore.”

“ _Why_?” Jongin asks. “Is it… because of where I come from?”

“What does that mean?” Joonmyun asks, tone turning to ice. He knows exactly what Jongin means, and the irritation in Jongin is replaced with shame that licks and bites him where he’s most sensitive. “Do you think you could be more specific, Jongin?”

Joonmyun has been anxious, moody, irritable with Jongin before. But never has he been full on _angry_ at Jongin, teeth bared and ready to lash out, and it scares Jongin to find out he’s provoked Joonmyun to this point when Joonmyun had initially chosen to stay silent.

He thinks about the phone call, from Secretary Park, and the questions he never asked. The invitation Jungah sent for her inauguration ceremony Jongin had only found in the mail after Joonmyun went home, whose mood had darkened for no apparent reason. How Joonmyun’s eyes follow Jongin whenever he goes to his closet and sifts through a whole rack of suit wear. The connections hadn’t formed in his head back then, but now they do.

“You found out,” Jongin says, quietly.

This seems to be the tipping point for Joonmyun since words start spilling from his mouth. “You knew I hated rich people,” he says, viciously. “And still, _still,_ you continued to deceive me. Did you have fun playing with me? How satisfying was it to watch me get embarrassed, become irrational, and fall in love with you?”

He is an avalanche, and Jongin is standing at the bottom of the mountain with nothing to shield him from the impact of Joonmyun’s fury.

Jongin frowns. “That’s not what I meant. I—” When Joonmyun puts it that way, Jongin wishes he had brought the subject up earlier. He’d been so concerned with Joonmyun’s fear of commitment and so… sure of his own, genuine affection that he forgot about the possibility of his behavior being misinterpreted in Joonmyun’s eyes.  

“Of course you didn’t mean to _really_ hurt me. It’s not like you wanted this to be a long term thing, right?” Joonmyun cuts Jongin off in the middle of his sentence, then gets louder and louder. “Did Seungjun put you up to this? Do you want to ruin my life too?” The rage that floods his scent after he says the unfamiliar name is an amount Jongin has never smelled on anyone before, and he’s overwhelmed on how to calm Joonmyun down. The corners of Joonmyun’s eyes are starting to moisten with angry tears, but Jongin restrains himself from wiping at Joonmyun’s face in case it aggravates him even more.

“Joonmyun, I’m sorry, please calm down first,” Jongin tries to reach for Joonmyun’s arm, but he’s shaken off. “Joonmyun!”

“If you think that I’m going to just waltz into your trap like some obsessed, love sick omega, you’re wrong,” Joonmyun says. His eyes are bright gold and pulsing with anger. “I’m going to fucking kill you first. I’m perfectly capable—”

With no other way of getting Joonmyun’s full attention, Jongin gets on his knees and grabs Joonmyun’s hands. “ _Joonmyun,_ will you just let me explain!” he yells, and Joonmyun stills.

Now that he’s no longer moving, Jongin takes in the omega’s appearance. 

While Joonmyun’s tongue had been a sharp, pointed knife to ward off potential danger, his face is much softer in contrast, the hurt written clearly all over his features even after he’s schooled his expression to be more neutral. Jongin has been around Joonmyun too much not to  how much it scares Joonmyun to reveal his true emotions, where they can be seen and preyed on for someone else’s benefit.

Jongin says, calmly, “From the beginning, my feelings for you… have been real. I knew nothing about you, only the fact that you smelled like home. Like a blanket that I wanted to curl up into and never come out of.”

Joonmyun inhales, sharply, but he doesn’t talk.

Jongin’s face is growing hot as he realizes how far gone he really is for Joonmyun, and he lets his eyes focus on a spot on Joonmyun’s leg. “I… liked you even more when you rejected me because it made you that much more interesting. But you were never, ever a challenge or conquest for me, Joonmyun. I just thought that maybe if one day you came to love me, it would definitely be for who I was, for my feelings towards you. It wouldn’t be for my money or my family background.”

“Why did you lie?” Joonmyun asks.

Jongin takes a deep breath. “I hid the fact that I was rich because I wanted your full approval. I wanted you to look at me before you looked at the superficial qualities that surrounded me. I wanted to show you, first and foremost, that I could be a really good mate who made you feel… loved, like you were your own person.”

He takes a peek at Joonmyun, whose face is mostly indecipherable, before he continues.

“I don’t know who Seungjun is and what he did to you, but I don’t play games with people’s emotions. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth earlier.”  

Unexpectedly, Joonmyun squats down so they can be on equal eye-level, and Jongin hiccups a little when he realizes Joonmyun’s face is merely a few inches away from his.

“Thank you, Jongin, for feeling that way about me,” Joonmyun says. He squeezes Jongin’s hand. “I’m sorry for blowing up at you unnecessarily.”

It’s a markedly short and unemotional response to Jongin’s long, winding confession, and Jongin has to stomp down on the disappointment that’s rising up in his throat. He had thought there would be an understanding after he cleared things up, but Joonmyun’s eyes are vague in character.

Jongin pulls his hand out of Joonmyun’s. “Are you still breaking up with me?” he asks. His eyes start to burn, and he takes a step back, even if he knows it won’t hurt any less to have Joonmyun reject him from farther away.

Joonmyun exhales, except that it sounds wobbly, like he’s unsure of himself. That uncertainty is all Jongin can grab onto at this point. “There are things about my past I haven’t revealed to you, and those events have inflicted a significant amount of damage on me. I am, obviously, _very fond_ of you but what I fear most is being lied to,” Joonmyun says, then sucks in a breath. He hasn’t answered Jongin’s question, and Jongin’s not sure whether he should feel hopeful or hopeless.

“So you don’t think it’s going to work?”

“I don’t know,” Joonmyun says. He looks tiny in his puffy black parka. “Your financial status and family background are obstacles I can’t ignore.”

“I don’t live off of my parents,” Jongin offers, “if that’s the problem.” On paper, he’s from a rich family but his mother hadn’t been, and she’d made sure to raise him with a mindset that wasn’t blind.

“No, that’s not…” Joonmyun looks down at his hands, half covered by his sleeves. He pulls them even deeper into his sleeves, so that only his fingertips are visible. “That’s not the issue. It’s just that I can’t put myself in a situation like that again.”

“A situation like what?”

Joonmyun looks up at him with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Jonginnie. At the very least, I’m going to need some distance for a while. I haven’t had very happy experiences with your class of people, so please understand my wishes.” The way he says _class of people_ makes Jongin feel like a wall has been forged between them, and he won’t be able to punch through it no matter how hard he tries.  

“How long do you think you’ll need?” he asks, hoping the answer isn’t _forever_ as he tries to permanently ingrain the sound of Joonmyun using the affectionate nickname into his brain.

“A week? Two weeks, maybe,” Joonmyun guesses. “I’m going to ask you to not contact me until I contact you first.”

If Joonmyun ends up deciding he doesn’t want to initiate contact with Jongin, it amounts to about the same as a break up. The thought that this could be the last time he sees Joonmyun makes Jongin’s heart twist painfully, and it feels more like an empty, brittle shell than a beating organ.

 

+

 

Almost two weeks pass by with no word from Joonmyun. Jongin tries to engross himself in his work, but every time he starts to concentrate, he’ll remember a part of their conversation or see an article of clothing Joonmyun left lying around in his apartment, only throwing himself into another cycle of turmoil.

Seollal offers him three days of welcome distraction, as his mother insists on him coming home for the whole holiday instead of just dropping in for one day like he did previous years. “Jongin-ah, the last time I saw you was for your sister’s inauguration ceremony and that was a month ago!” she’d said in her best _I’m so disappointed in you_ voice, and Jongin had known, just by listening, that one of her arms was folded across her chest and her lips were pursed in her signature pout. He’d had no choice but to give in.   

There’s light snow fall when he gets out of the car, so he pulls the hood of his parka up, over his baseball cap. The bag of apples clutched in his hand seems to grow heavier when he stops to check his phone and sees that there aren’t any new messages.

In a moment of weakness, he considers texting Joonmyun for any reason. To ask if he’s doing well, or ask if he’s visiting his parents for Seollal like Jongin is, but Joonmyun had specifically asked him not to initiate contact. Sighing, he slips his phone into a pocket and presses the buzzer at the gate.  

After he comes in, Jongin’s mother takes one look at him while he’s switching from his outdoor shoes into a pair of guest slippers, and her easygoing smile is immediately replaced with concern. She takes the bag of fruits he’s brought and puts it by the table where the _charye_ will be set up later. “Is something wrong, dear?”  

He gives her a weary grin. “Just tired. Work has been hectic.” Along with waiting for a call or message that might never come, he’s also had to tackle several problems that popped up last minute and consequently, push back work for other crucial deadlines. 

“Work has never made you look that fatigued,” she says. Her eyes are piercing. If Jongin hadn’t been raised by her, he’d be unnerved. “…Something else? Mate troubles?”

“It’s not really mate troubles when you don’t have a mate,” Jongin sighs, sitting down on the couch. He takes off his baseball cap and pats his bangs flat until he’s satisfied, before putting the hat on again. “What did you do to make dad agree to be with you?” 

She sits down next to him and laughs in embarrassment, resting her right hand against her cheek. “I smothered him in attention,” she says. “I told him my intentions at least once a week and made food for him all the time.”

“Did he eat it?” Jongin asks, fairly certain Joonmyun wouldn’t appreciate that kind of perseverance, since he likes controlled, evenly distributed affection that doesn’t suffocate him. “Wasn’t he uncomfortable?”

“I found out all his favorite dishes so that he couldn’t resist my charms,” she says, coyly. “And then I suddenly stopped.”

“Why?”

“Because when someone is nice to you every day that it starts to feel like a habit, and then they suddenly stop, you’ll realize that you’ve built dependence on them,” she explains. “That’s what happened to your father. Predictably, he approached me three days later to ask me out.”

That’s not the sugar coated story Jongin remembers hearing as a child. “How terrifying,” he says, mildly. “I don’t think that would work in my situation though.”  

“Why not?” she asks. “No relationship is built the same way, but the general principle should be the same, right?”                                                    

“He didn’t like the fact that I come from a wealthy family,” Jongin says. The guilt and confusion are still at heads with each other in his mind. He doesn’t know where he could have acted differently, whether any changes would have made a difference in the end. “And he said he needed time to think about it, if he could date me.”

“Oh.” She hums. “Did you try your best?”

“What?”

“Did you try your best to let him know exactly how you feel?” she asks, elaborating on her original question.

Jongin thinks of Joonmyun, who left his smell in Jongin’s sheets but took Jongin’s heart with him the moment he walked out the door. He reviews what Joonmyun had asked, and his own answers. Although he’d betrayed Joonmyun’s trust, he had been wholehearted with his intentions and feelings all along, trying his best to straighten their misunderstandings out even until the end. Given a second chance, he doesn’t think he would do anything differently. 

“Yes,” he replies.

“Then that’s all you can do,” his mother says, “even if your best doesn’t turn out to be enough for him. We control what we can in our lives, and pray for what we cannot.” 

Within the hour, other relatives start to arrive, and Jongin is too busy playing friendly host with his mother to get drawn too deeply back into his thoughts about Joonmyun and the silence between them.    

 

+

 

After Seollal, Jongin is left to his own devices again. Everything he does leads a one way arrow back to Joonmyun, and he wishes he could scrape emotions out of his brain so he can just move _on_.

He makes a trip to the grocery store to get some fresh air. When he comes back to his apartment building, he checks his mailbox and grabs the bundle of envelopes and pamphlets without looking too carefully at the contents. He’ll do that later.   

Once he’s inside, Jongin spreads the mail out on his dining table so he can sort them. There are advertisements from local convenience stores, bank membership offers that Jongin always tosses out but never seems to stop getting, and… a letter from Joonmyun. Jongin recognizes the handwriting instantly, with its slightly slanted and curvy print.

(He’d seen it for the first time when Joonmyun fell asleep at the dining table, still tightly clutching at a pen despite being unconscious. Jongin had glanced at some of Joonmyun’s pink corrections, laughing as he realized Joonmyun made notes in the margin the same way he spoke: blunt and to the point. His comments weren’t always critical, but there was no flower language to mislead the person receiving the feedback.

Later, Joonmyun had told him that he didn’t like using red when he edited articles because it was a color people associated with mistakes, and that he wanted the writers of those articles to see his comments as “strong suggestions for improvement” rather than strict corrections. Jongin had fallen a little harder for him, as usual.) 

Using a scissor to cut a small sliver of the envelope, Jongin slides the paper out and unfolds it, startled to see an entire page of Joonmyun’s writing. The mistakes appear to have been crossed out with a ruler, they’re so neat, and some characters are written darker than others to cover up initial mishaps.

_Dear Jonginnie,_

_I’m writing you this letter in the hopes that after you read it, you’ll understand my thinking and behavior better. I know you prefer talking in person, but I’m not very eloquent when I am put under pressure and I’d rather plan out important things like this ahead of time._

_Ah, where to start? A little more than three years ago, I was approached by an alpha named Park Seungjun. He is well known in high society as his father is a conglomerate CEO, but I wasn’t aware of it during the time we engaged in what I believed to be a serious, romantic relationship. He was handsome, charming, and rich, much like yourself, and I was naïve, making it easy for him to manipulate me however he wanted. He smelled like… home, at the time, even though I never felt 100% comfortable being myself around him and had to work extremely hard to mold my personality into an ideal he forced on me. After I met you, I realized that his scent wasn’t good at all. Perhaps I dreamed his scent up to compensate for my lack of trust in him._

_Looking back on how he treated me, I think he did love me, but had no courage to admit it to his family or friends. I was his dirty secret, and I should have seen that as a red flag. When he realized he was in danger of being found out for being gay and dating someone ‘ordinary,’ he prioritized his own safety and dropped me. Because he had a fiancé the whole time we were together, it was easy for him to blame me for everything. He repeatedly used excuses such as it wasn’t his fault, I just “smelled” like I needed an alpha, etc. etc. Thrown into the spotlight as the homewrecker that robbed him of his ability to think for himself, I was being shamed constantly for simply… being in a relationship with someone I liked._

_It was difficult for me to move on after the scandal, and many months passed before I could sleep through an entire night. I slept with many different alphas and betas to fulfill the promiscuous role that had been stamped across my forehead, and never met anyone a second time. Until you._

_By no means am I comparing you to Seungjun, but you must recognize the oddly similar circumstances between the two of you, with both of you coming from wealthy families and specifically concealing that information from me. My fear is hopefully not as ridiculous or baseless as you originally thought. I am, however, touched by what you told me two weeks ago. If you think you still have the patience to be with me after reading this, please let me know. I want to try my best with you._

 

 _Best wishes,_

_Kim Joonmyun_

Underneath his name is a glittering frog sticker, which Joonmyun has embellished by adding asterisks and shine marks.

“I love frogs,” Jongin says, helplessly, to himself, even if it’s not the thought of frogs that’s threatening to make his heart explode right now.

His hands shake as he slowly and deliberately types out a message on text.

_Jongin: Joonmyun, I got your letter. Do you have time to meet today?_

He fidgets for a few minutes, sitting down on the couch to prop his arms on his knees, then standing up and pacing back and forth across his rug. Sit down, stand up, walk around, repeat. There’s a hot and itchy feeling crawling up his neck, and he can’t settle down at all. He doesn’t know whether it’s more from the anticipation of speaking to Joonmyun again, or from shock at learning the personal events in Joonmyun’s life that had changed his behavior so drastically. All of Joonmyun’s reactions, paranoia, fear… they make sense, once Jongin thinks about it. In every conversation, every interaction they had, Joonmyun had always been terrified of something only he could see and Jongin couldn’t, a darker, shadow-like presence that lurked behind them. Jongin realizes now that the shadow was the possibility of falling in love with someone like Seungjun, and re-living the same nightmare all over again. 

With no familiar ‘beep’ from his phone to indicate any new messages coming in, Jongin tries to take his mind off of his anxiety and goes into the kitchen to boil some water for a cup of tea. In between pouring the water into a mug and scouring his cupboard for tea bags, Jongin hears his phone beep. He plunges the tea bag into the water, hooking the end of the string to the top of the cup before he walks back to check if Joonmyun has replied.

_Joonmyun: Yes, I do. Would you be alright with meeting at Hangang Park? I’m free all day after 2 pm._

The “all day” makes Jongin’s stomach twist, but in a good way.

_Jongin: Sounds good. 3 pm?_

_Joonmyun: 3 pm._

 

+

 

In preparation for the weather, Jongin has put on several layers and a thick overcoat, but it doesn’t change how biting the wind is when he gets out of his car. Temperatures in Seoul are lowest during January, and it’s early February now so he shouldn’t be that surprised. He pulls his hood over his head, huffing and puffing in a very unrefined manner when some of the fur catches on his mouth.

“Out you come,” he says, grabbing the orange dinosaur he’d bought at Lotte World from the passenger’s seat and placing it back in the yellow bag before he seals the top with a sticker. He’d added a crimson bow he’d sewed together himself on top of the dinosaur’s head, and right before he left his place, he’d double checked that he removed the price tag and receipt from the bag before he left his place. The bow is big and obnoxious, and hopefully Joonmyun will understand when he sees it.  

The park isn’t as crowded as it is on the weekends, but plenty of people are walking around. Jongin weaves a path through parents trying to keep track of their energetic children as well as couples going on strolls together, until he finally sees Joonmyun’s figure in the distance. 

Joonmyun is waiting by the river, back turned towards Jongin as he watches the ducks swimming along the border.

“Originally, I was going to get you flowers,” Jongin says when he gets close enough, startling Joonmyun momentarily. He turns around to face Jongin, one end of his scarf unravelling and falling from his shoulder. “But then I remembered I got you this, and it seemed fitting for the occasion.” 

“What is it?” Joonmyun asks, and wraps his scarf around his neck so that it’s secure again. If he stutters a little on his words, neither of them notice.

Jongin hands the bag over to him without answering his question. He feels like he’s watching a video in slow motion as Joonmyun painstakingly peels the sticker back so that it doesn’t rip and pulls apart the two flaps. There’s the slow, then rapid flutter of his eyelashes against his cheek, and the way his eyelids tuck upwards when he looks from the bag to Jongin in bemusement.  

A noise of disbelief leaves him, when he pulls the dinosaur plush out of the bag. “Is this the... when did you _get_ this, Jongin?” Joonmyun asks, biting his lip and glancing up at Jongin happily. His fingers are curled around the neck, and he squeezes at it absently.

Trying not to sound like he’s panicking out of his mind, Jongin asks meekly, “Do you like it?”

He gets the breath knocked out of him when Joonmyun tackles him in a hug, his chin and the top of Joonmyun’s head bumping, but not so hard that Jongin feels much pain. “Jongin, I didn’t even realize you noticed… I love it. I love it so much,” says Joonmyun. Half of his words disappear into the material of Jongin’s coat, but it doesn’t diminish their effect one bit.

When he attempts to push Joonmyun back by the arms so he can look him in the eye, Joonmyun just buries his face deeper into Jongin’s chest and tightens his grip on Jongin’s waist. With Joonmyun in his arms like this, Jongin doesn’t feel very cold, anymore.

“I didn’t know whether you would respond to the letter,” Joonmyun confesses, turning his head to speak so that his mouth is no longer covered and Jongin can actually hear him. “I wasn’t sure when you’d get it, but I didn’t want to deliver it myself in case I ran into you.”

“Why wouldn’t I, when I’ve been fighting for you to look at me this whole time?” Jongin asks.

“You liked me without knowing very much about me,” Joonmyun counters, and un-sticks himself from Jongin, squeezing the dinosaur plush reflexively. His lips look tense, like he’s biting at the inside of his mouth to remain calm but his tone is casual when he opens his mouth. It’s intriguing to see how Joonmyun’s facial features and voice always show conflicting emotions. “Maybe you would realize that I was too much of a burden.”

“Never.” They start walking, and Jongin takes advantage of the moment to hold Joonmyun’s hand. “It’s cold,” he says, when Joonmyun narrows his eyes at him. His hand doesn’t get shaken off though, which is promising.

“So this is your answer to my question?” Joonmyun is referring to their intertwined fingers. “No regrets?” His eyes have grown large in uncertainty, and his eyebrows, normally resting just below his bangs, have now moved up and disappeared into his hair. Jongin wants to smooth out his forehead with a kiss, but suppresses the impulse because they’re in public. 

“I spent a considerable amount of time sewing that bow on top of the dinosaur’s head,” Jongin says, deadpan. “I’ve gone to too much trouble to back off now.”  

“That’s your only reason?” Joonmyun asks, pretending to be angry, but his lips are twitching, and Jongin knows Joonmyun’s more amused than anything else.

“One of many,” Jongin tells him. “I like how you hiccup in your sleep, and the sound of your wheezing when you try to hold in a bigger laugh because I am the funniest person you know.”

A loud exhale escapes Joonmyun even though he doesn’t open his mouth, and Jongin can best describe it as an elevated version of an exasperated nose laugh. “My favorite thing about you so far, though,” Jongin continues, “is how you pretend you’re indifferent to others’ suffering, but you’re actually very kind. You thought I had betrayed you, yet you still went out of your way to take care of me when I was sick.”

“You texted me that you were dying.” Joonmyun’s rebuttal is weak, and they both know it, going by the grimace on Joonmyun’s face. Jongin laughs loud and unrestrained, accidentally disturbing an elderly couple on a park bench whom he apologizes profusely to.

“It’s chilly out here,” Jongin says, peering back at how far they’ve walked. He doesn’t look forward to walking back, and walking even more to get to his car. “Want to go get coffee?”

“Sure,” Joonmyun, grateful for the change of topics. He darts out his tongue to lick at his lips.

It’s only when they’ve sat down with their drinks at a café located nearby that Joonmyun seems to understand what the red bow on the dinosaur is for. His cheeks flush in irritation as he glares at Jongin. “This is supposed to be that stupid headband you got me, isn’t it?”

“I thought it was obvious,” Jongin says, sipping at his hot chocolate. He doesn’t need any extra caffeine today since his emotions are fully capable of getting into a jumbled mess all by themselves. “I mean. It is big, red and obnoxious.”

“I was too busy being happy to notice,” Joonmyun grumbles, but looks absolutely miserable that he just admitted something so embarrassing, and sips at his black coffee in silence for the next five minutes.

Jongin asks, after a period of comfortable silence, “What made you change your mind in the end?”

“I made a trip to Bongeunsa,” Joonmyun says, “to clear my head. My mom took me there sometimes when I was little.”

“The temple near the COEX building, right?” Jongin’s mother has mentioned attending a temple stay at Bongeunsa in the past, but Jongin’s never gone to one himself.

“Yes. The visit helped me calm down, and I had a lot of time to think,” Joonmyun says. His cheeks and the tip of his nose are flushed pink, probably because the heating in the café has finally caught up with him. “You’re not Seungjun, and I don’t think it’s fair for me to keep comparing you to him when the two of you aren’t… similar at all.” He burrows deeper into his scarf, frowning, the wool covering most of his chin.

“The scar you asked about,” he says, holding out his right hand for Jongin to see. “I told you it was from an accident, but it was from the day Seungjun’s parents found out he was dating me. His mom lost her temper, and threw glass at the wall. It wasn’t aimed at me, but it broke, so.” He closes his eyes as he says it, and it’s clear that every detail of the memory has remained imprinted in his mind, as fresh as the day it happened.

“I was scared, in that moment, of what else she might do to me, but afterwards I was so, unbearably angry. She wrote me off as a stereotype, like my only intention was to ruin her son’s life, when she didn’t even understand Seungjun. I…” he trails off, with a sigh. Jongin wishes he could pull Joonmyun’s scarf down and make his misery go away.

“I’m so sorry,” he says instead. Gently, he rubs his thumb across the scar to soothe Joonmyun, who has burrowed even deeper into his scarf.  

“I used to think that if I went through the motions of someone who looked happy, I would _become_ happy at some point. But pretending is so painful,” he says, and Jongin’s heart breaks to think of how many months, how many years Joonmyun has smiled without meaning it, “and I no longer want to settle for being just satisfied enough to get by.”

Tone less serious, he continues on to say, “I tried to imagine the rest of my life and how I would feel knowing I never gave this relationship a real chance.”

“And?” 

“I couldn’t,” Joonmyun laughs, pleasantly. It is a beautiful sound, and Jongin wants to wrap himself in layers and layers of it, so he never has to go a second without hearing Joonmyun’s joy. “After all, I came home from Bongeunsa to find your stuff lying everywhere and realized that it’s impossible to imagine a life without you. I’ve always hated risks, but Jonginnie, you’re the one risk I wholeheartedly want to take.” 

At last, Joonmyun has stepped out of his greenhouse with trepidation to feel the warm sunlight on his face. Jongin wants to kiss him silly and make sure he never questions his own self worth again.

“Is it hotter, now that you’ve stepped out into the sun?” Jongin asks, and Joonmyun laughs, not understanding.

Perplexed, he points out the window, and says, “It’s… cloudy, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” Jongin says, satisfied with Joonmyun’s answer despite their exchange having made no sense whatsoever.

Joonmyun chuckles again. He’s probably chalking up Jongin’s elusive question to one of the cheesy metaphors Jongin’s prone to making. It’s pretty torturous to be blinded with Joonmyun’s neat teeth and pink lips, and not be able to _touch_ him properly.  

“Can we go home, like right now?” Jongin asks. Joonmyun blinks, almost offended, before he puts Jongin’s words and Jongin’s rapidly changing scent together, and starts laughing a little louder. They finish their drinks, not in the mood for conversation anymore, and Jongin pulls Joonmyun with him to where his car is parked after they’ve tossed their empty cups in the garbage.

“Drive safely,” Joonmyun warns, when Jongin literally manhandles him into the passenger’s seat.

The drive to Joonmyun’s apartment is quiet. Joonmyun is looking out though the window on his side most of the time, orange dinosaur in his lap, and Jongin is trying to drive as fast as he can without getting into an accident.

In the privacy of Joonmyun’s living room, Jongin leans in to cup Joonmyun’s face and kiss the older man after they’ve hung their jackets on Joonmyun’s coat rack just outside of the doorway. Their kisses have always been heavy, leaving Jongin feeling thoroughly debauched and twisty inside afterwards, but this time there’s a sense of… infiniteness. Jongin doesn’t have work so hard to memorize each kiss anymore because Joonmyun is here to stay, and the thought is mind-numbingly sweet.  

“Actually,” Joonmyun says, pulling his mouth away from Jongin’s to speak. Jongin is already riled up and chases Joonmyun’s lips by closing the distance between them again, so it takes a while before Joonmyun can really say what he needs to say. “Jongin! Jeez. I have a birthday present for you.”

“You didn’t have to,” Jongin says, in surprise. Joonmyun’s lips are now much darker than their usual dusty pink, and Jongin admires his handiwork before adding, “You spent the whole day with me.”

“And then I broke up with you a couple days later,” Joonmyun says. “Not the best boyfriend, am I?” It’s really cute, how his natural inclination is always to smile but he’ll subconsciously pull the corners of his lips down to compensate for it.

“No. Only second best,” Jongin says, and Joonmyun groans, knowing exactly what’s coming next. “I’m first place.”

“Never mind, I’ll keep your present for myself,” Joonmyun waves his hand dismissively. Despite his words, he gets off the couch, extracting himself from Jongin’s hold limb by limb, and picks up a box in the corner of the room. He places it in Jongin’s lap for Jongin to open. It’s lime green in color, with frog eyes on the top, made up of painted cardboard and googly eyes from the craft store, and frog legs coming off the sides.

Jongin bites his lip, touched. “Joonmyun…”

“Frogs are stupid,” Joonmyun informs him, but he’s doing that thing again where he tries to pull down his lips to disguise an oncoming smile. The smile eventually dominates, sort of, and Jongin feels like the sun’s brightness is being blasted at him even if the lightbulbs in Joonmyun’s living room are very yellow and very dim. He lifts the lid off and takes out a black scarf, emitting a soft gasp as he spreads his fingers out over the soft material.

“Joonmyun” is about the only thing he can get out, and Joonmyun chuckles.

“You’re always cold, and sneezing, and looking for tissues. I was going to get you a box of tissues, but decided that this gift is less mean-spirited.” The excessive usage of _and_ s, along with his fast talking, are undeniable signs that Joonmyun is flustered and searching for words to relieve his own awkwardness.  

Jongin used to prefer people who were cheerful and friendly all the time because they were easy to get along with, even though they weren’t always genuinely happy to be with him. But then he met Joonmyun, who only willingly lets out a teaspoon of happiness a day at most, so the unrestrained smiles and acts of kindness he directs onto Jongin now have become much more meaningful.

“Thank you,” Jongin says. “I’ll wear it well. But now…” he puts the scarf back in the box, neatly, because Joonmyun is looking, then the frog eyed lid on top, and slides it next to his bag on the floor.

Joonmyun giggles adorably when Jongin kisses at his neck, but his laughing transitions into moaning pretty fast as Jongin finds a particularly tender spot below his jaw. Jongin must have a sadistic side to him, because he really likes how Joonmyun moans, all high-pitched and uncomfortable like the sounds are leaving his mouth against his will. He sneaks his hands up both sides of Joonmyun’s tummy, lifting his boyfriend’s crewneck and shirt so that the fabric is scrunched up just above Joonmyun’s nipples. He admires the sight for a while, enjoying how enticing Joonmyun looks partially naked, skin much paler in contrast to his clothes, before he pulls the layers up and over Joonmyun’s head. Rubbing at a nipple repeatedly with the pad of his thumb gets Jongin a roll of Joonmyun’s hips against him in return, and Jongin ruts against Joonmyun’s thigh shamelessly, already hard. 

He doesn’t want to come right away, so he focuses on getting Joonmyun off and lets his hand drift to Joonmyun’s belt, fumbling with the buckle a little as a result of not wearing them much himself. Joonmyun pushes up, instinctively, making Jongin mumble “I’m here, I’m here,” as he finally gets the buckle undone and pulls Joonmyun’s jeans down to reveal milky thighs and his slightly darker cock. 

“I’m going to suck your dick,” Jongin says bluntly, not that he thinks Joonmyun is going to object. He still waits, in case Joonmyun is uncomfortable with the idea, and it’s only after he gets a half shy, half stunned nod in response that he takes Joonmyun into his mouth.

“Fuck, I –” Joonmyun groans, the muscles all over his body tightening as he tries not to thrust forward at the new, wet heat surrounding his cock. Jongin aligns his palms to the curve of Joonmyun’s ass in order to hold his hips down, and is merciless in his experimentation, figuring out within minutes what makes Joonmyun whimper helplessly for more. When Jongin goes to lightly massage the area of skin under Joonmyun’s balls, Joonmyun is sensitive enough by that point that he comes instantly at the stimulation, and Jongin swallows everything while keeping his eyes on Joonmyun the whole time.

The taste of Joonmyun clings to Jongin’s teeth and tongue. He makes sure Joonmyun gets to taste it too, when he straightens up to kiss him, his mind filled mostly with white space and a consuming desire for Joonmyun that just grows and grows and _grows_.   

“Take it off,” Joonmyun says, referring to Jongin’s pants. Somehow, he still manages to come across as authoritative even though he’s winded, and he pulls at the waistband of Jongin’s jeans impatiently. Jongin’s only unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans when Joonmyun gets tired of waiting and palms at the front of Jongin’s boxers with no reservation, making Jongin’s hips stutter dangerously. 

“Take those off too,” Joonmyun says, soft voice completely replaced with a deeper, sultry one as he looks up at Jongin. With those eyes on him, Jongin feels so hot at the pit of his core that he’s almost worried he’ll burn up from the inside out. Joonmyun stops touching long enough to let him push his briefs and jeans down to his knees, but his fingers are forming a tight circle of heat around Jongin’s cock before Jongin can get the offending articles fully off. His jeans are stuck around his ankles because the bottoms are very slim, and Jongin deems it a lost cause, letting his attention travel back to the warmth of Joonmyun’s hand on him.

A lot of pre-cum is leaking, which Joonmyun takes advantage of by dragging the slick down Jongin’s shaft to make the slide easier. It doesn’t take long before the familiar coiling sensation builds up in Jongin’s gut and he warns Joonmyun, who, in response, just tugs harder and faster until Jongin’s orgasm catches him by surprise and washes over him like a wave. Joonmyun catches most of Jongin’s come in his hands, preventing any from getting onto the furniture. Some of it has gotten on his stomach, though, and Jongin rubs that in circles into the skin so Joonmyun can smell more like him. There’s a quirk to Joonmyun’s lips like he wants to complain but hasn’t decided yet whether he wants to go to the effort.

“I’m glad you’re here, with me,” Jongin says, diverting Joonmyun’s attention from the mess on his stomach.

“Quick reminder that this is my apartment,” Joonmyun says, blandly. After sex, not only does he become milder, his words do too. The usual sharp corners in his pronunciation are no longer as demanding and soften to form gentle, doughy strands.

“I’m happy to be here, with you,” Jongin revises, and Joonmyun hums, content. 

“Let’s get cleaned up,” he says.

When they’ve both finished showering, Joonmyun hands Jongin a pair of his sweatpants and a shirt Jongin left behind for a few weeks. “I washed it for you,” Joonmyun says. He scratches the back of his neck. “It’s a little wrinkly, though.”  

“That’s fine, thank you.” Jongin puts on the clothes, adjusting them a little so they’re not crooked. 

Joonmyun fidgets with his hands, when he says, “I visited my parents for Seollal.”

“You did?” Jongin says, alert. Joonmyun will speak more calmly if something is important, or concerning to him. Jongin thinks it might be to combat how nervous he feels on the inside. “How was it?”

“I do it every year so it’s not… there wasn’t anything unexpected,” Joonmyun says. “They were happy to see me.” Even as he tries for an apathetic smile, his lower lip is sticking out.

“That’s good, right?” Jongin asks, because it’s like there’s something... bigger waiting to come from behind Joonmyun’s words. Maybe a dragon from a cave, but the dragon is sleeping and he isn’t sure how much longer he should watch the rocks blocking the entrance. There’s a discrepancy, somewhere.

“It was Seollal, so my brother was there, too,” Joonmyun says. “I wasn’t particularly thrilled to see him, but that’s not anything new.”

Jongin supposes he could take one rock out at a time, and inch into the cave. “Can I ask why you and your brother don’t get along?”

“He’s a good guy, high achieving, but…” Joonmyun hesitates, and his normal smell is permeated with a strong bitterness. From experience, Jongin’s learned to associate that level of bitterness with the feeling of inferiority and inadequacy. “He’s an alpha, so we were raised to have different mindsets in how we approach things. He doesn’t try to understand things he doesn’t like but it’s _very_ important that his opinions are acknowledged and respected by everyone else. To him there’s only one right way to do things, and it’s his way.”

“That’s not a very open minded way to live,” Jongin remarks. “Do your parents pressure you to be like him?”

“No. I’m lucky that they don’t… pressure me to do anything I don’t want. There are other omegas who aren’t so fortunate,” Joonmyun says. “But it’s hard _not_ to compare myself to him because as his little brother, I should at least match up, right?” A harsh laugh.

“I understand what you mean,” Jongin says. “About needing to measure yourself up to someone else’s standard, even if it’s not… right or healthy.”

“He’s got a high paying job and a long term girlfriend, and I had a scandal slash failed relationship that nearly cost me my career. You can imagine why I don’t want to come home too often or see him one on one at all.”

“Joonmyun,” Jongin says, and tugs Joonmyun towards him, so that he can rest his head in Jongin’s chest. So that Joonmyun knows he’s not alone, even if he’s in a room full of people that condemn him for being who they think he is, because he has Jongin to support him.

Jongin had felt a similar way in university, when he would overhear relatives from both sides of the family complaining to his father behind closed doors about letting Jongin study art when it wasn’t going to be of any use to the company in the future. His father had already been struggling to accept Jongin’s decision, and Jongin had only felt more subpar with his relatives’ objections piling on top of him. Jungah had been the golden child: smart but modest, a natural leader that wanted to study exactly what their parents wished for. On the other hand, Jongin had been the clumsy, lanky one who might have grown up handsome but never grew out of wanting to draw the various sections of the company instead work in them.

Joonmyun clears his throat, allowing Jongin to break out of his pensiveness, and says, “Anyways, I told my parents that I have… I have someone I like and that I would try dating seriously.”

“You did?” Jongin’s mouth feels dry. It’s one thing for Joonmyun to want him back, but it’s another for him to tell his parents that there’s someone (Jongin) who makes him want a relationship again. 

“Yes,” Joonmyun says. “They were pleased. I haven’t brought up anyone since…”

Jongin nods, so that Joonmyun doesn’t have to finish his sentence.

Joonmyun sighs. “My brother talked over me, saying that I was just being foolish and making up feelings out of nothing again. He said that I was going to fuck it up, just like I did three years ago by falling for Seungjun’s tricks,” he says, spreading his fingers out and examining each one by itself.

“He’s… very quick to judge, and cruel, isn’t he?” is all Jongin can really say. He can’t imagine having an older sibling that nitpicks at every mistake and tries to predict his failures. 

“He’s also wrong. He thinks that I’m still five years old and looking up to him, but I no longer need his validation because I’ve done fine without it these last few years,” Joonmyun adds, and looks Jongin in the eye. “You’re one of the best things that has happened to me, and I’m not going to let him or anyone else tell me otherwise.”

 

                                                                                         +                                                                                              

 

Sometimes, two people think they’re in love, but what they’ve actually done is just build up ideal images of each other to fulfill a sense of belonging, and escape their simultaneously mutual and separate loneliness. As time passes, the excitement and passion fades once they realize that their rose colored glasses don’t function as well anymore. Fights ensue once their high opinions of each other are shattered for good, and the fate of the relationship depends on how well they accept the reality of being two imperfect human beings with different types of flaws.

For Jongin, falling in love with Joonmyun is the exact opposite. As February gives way to March, he finds that the Joonmyun he’d touched, laughed with, liked so much before was only a fraction of the real Joonmyun, who sings, cries, and teases with far more liveliness. It’s a strange and awe-inducing metamorphosis. Jongin feels fortunate that he’s one of the few who are able to watch so many layers of Joonmyun peel away, each one precious and revealing something more beautiful underneath.

Joonmyun has so much love in him that it would burst out of his seams if he was a plush toy. Instead, he’s human, so his love is stored in his eyes, and toothy smile, and the way he scoots closer to Jongin on the couch so their shoulders can touch. He’s still under the impression that Jongin doesn’t notice this sneaky maneuver (but Jongin is always watching Joonmyun and cataloguing everything about him, so of course he notices).

Recently, Joonmyun has unleashed his 1,000 years of knowledge about reptiles and all sorts of animals to Jongin, who only cares to listen because he likes whatever makes Joonmyun beam with so much intensity.

“Alligators run at eleven miles per hour versus a whopping twenty miles per hour when they swim in the water,” Joonmyun says, in the middle of doing work. He says it with such a serious tone that Jongin forgoes the teasing and decides to humor his boyfriend.

“Does that mean a human can escape an alligator?” He scrolls through his phone while he says it, resuming his browsing through an online selection of rings and saving the ones that he thinks will look nice on Joonmyun’s hand.

“If they can keep a pace faster than eleven miles per hour, for longer than the alligator, then yes,” Joonmyun answers. He’s gone back to proofreading article drafts for DELIRIUM, and misses the lack of sincerity written all over Jongin’s face. “It’s not impossible. People who are out of shape would be in trouble, though.”

“How horrible,” Jongin says in false agreement, and Joonmyun seems to catch the playful lilt in his tone this time, looking up.

“Are you making fun of me?” he asks, setting down his correcting pen to dig fingers into Jongin’s soft flesh where he’s the most ticklish. Jongin quickly locks his phone so Joonmyun won’t see what he’s been up to, and his high pitched scream of a laugh fills the room as he struggles to get away from Joonmyun’s unrelenting claws.

They end up on the ground with Joonmyun on top, and he rests all of his weight on Jongin while Jongin wheezes out a squeaky “Alligators are wonderful, alligators are life” to make amends.

“Well,” Joonmyun says, getting off of Jongin’s back, “as long as you acknowledge that.”

Jongin groans and rolls over. Ring searching can be continued another time.   

 

+

 

Jongin’s mother’s birthday is on the 14th of March, two months from Jongin’s. She has a routine of going to the sports center in the morning nearly every day to swim, and Jongin waits outside the entrance with a bouquet of flowers behind his back, hoping to catch her as she leaves. He’d called Secretary Park beforehand to let him know that he would pick up his mother so that the family attorney wouldn’t have to make an extra trip.

He sees her through the tinted glass of the automatic doors before she sees him. The doors slide open to reveal her clutching several bags, and Jongin moves by reflex to help lighten her burden by carrying one for her.

“Jongin-ah, what are you doing here?” she asks.

Jongin smiles and presents the flowers in his hand, making his mother gasp. “Happy birthday, mom.”

“Don’t remind me,” she says, but she still takes the flowers and coos at them in delight. “I’m long past the age where I should be celebrating my birthday like a kid.

“Birthdays are happy things no matter how old you are,” Jongin says, leading her the way to where he’s parked his car. “Why shouldn’t you celebrate another year of life when you only get more and more beautiful each day?"  

She scoffs at the flattery, and says, “I don’t remember you eating much honey when you were young. What made you become such a sweet talker?”

Jongin gives her a makeshift heart by crossing his thumb and index finger, blinking innocently. “Must have been all the pastries you fed me?” He unlocks his car and opens the door on the passenger side for his mother to get in, once she’s put all her bags in the trunk. Before he starts driving, he turns the air conditioning on because she likes the circulation.

“Where are we going?” she asks, curling a lock of hair behind her ear after she’s buckled up her seatbelt.

“I’m taking you out for lunch.” Jongin tries to pull his sleeve up to his elbow, but the material slips from his fingers and the force from his pulling makes him land a punch towards his own chest. “Ow. Where would you like to eat?”

She rubs at the spot where he hit himself to comfort him. “Let’s go to the café close to our house, the one I used to take you and Jungah to,” she says. “They’ve done renovations recently, and I haven’t had a chance to check it out.”

“Okay,” Jongin says, as he starts the car.

He doesn’t notice that he’s humming until his mother tells him so. “You’re singing so happily. You must be in a good mood,” she observes.

“I am.”

Her smile is all knowing as she asks, “Would you like to tell me why?”

“You remember the guy I mentioned before, right?” Jongin says. He turns out onto the main road. “When Jungah and Minseok formally met, and then at Seollal.”

“Yes I do,” she says. “Has he agreed to be your mate?”

“I, uh—”

“Am I…” she gasps, “to organize the claiming ceremony already?”

“Oh _no_ , I was just going to tell you that we’re dating seriously,” Jongin says, wheezing at his mother’s haste.

“That’s all?” she echoes. “It’s been months and all you’ve done is started dating seriously?”

“There were a lot of bumps in the road along the way,” Jongin explains. If he whines a little, his mother doesn’t point it out. “You should be proud of me. I’ve made a lot of progress.”

“If you say so,” she replies, and Jongin doesn’t have to look at her to know she’s raising her eyebrow doubtfully. “Tell me, what is his name?”  

“Joonmyun,” Jongin says. “I’m... thinking of officially asking him to be my mate in May.”

His mother doesn’t speak for a long time, and Jongin momentarily takes his eyes off the road and looks at her to see where her attention has gone. “What is it?”

“I want to meet him,” she says firmly.

“So suddenly?” Jongin wouldn’t mind, but he’s not as sure how Joonmyun would feel about the prospect.

“Someone who’s capable of changing my son so much that he wants commitment, must be very, very special,” she says. “I never worried about Jungah finding someone because she’s not closed off. She’s just picky, you know? You, on the other hand, always seemed lonely and unable to connect with others even if you had many people who were interested in you.”

Jongin, to protect his mother’s gentle heart, has never told her about the real reason behind the “interest” people showed him during high school and university. But now he has Joonmyun, whose interest is the best and only attention Jongin wants, so he doesn’t need to focus on things from the past that made him unhappy.

“Joonmyun _is_ special,” he agrees. From day one, Joonmyun’s wrapped a thin but wiry thread around his heart and swallowed the other end so that Jongin is always, connected to him. “I’ll talk to him about meeting you. I don’t know if he’ll be okay with it, though, because he doesn’t do so well with parents.”

“He can take his time,” Jongin’s mother says. “There’s no rush. My only condition is that you let me meet him before you propose to him.”

“Yes,” Jongin says. “Of course.”

“Not that I’m trying to control who you date. I’d just like to meet him earlier,” she explains. “You can make your own decisions just fine, and I’m sure that you wouldn’t like Joonmyun so much if he wasn’t a nice boy.”

Jongin wouldn’t, in a million years, ever accuse his mother of attempting to control his decisions. She raised him to have manners and behave as expected in front of haughty relatives, but he was free to pursue his interests at home when they had no guests or special events.  

She’s never… tried to micromanage his life the way his father did, whose forehead wrinkled with turmoil every time he found Jongin doodling, who taught Jongin what parts of himself to be ashamed of and the parts of himself to manipulate into looking better than they really were.

“I know you wouldn’t do that, mom,” Jongin says. “Thank you.”

At the café, Jongin buys them coffee, and muffins to split and share. While they eat, he shares photos of Joonmyun on his phone with her, and in turn, he listens to his mother ramble about her recent experiments with bread making. She tells him all about various baking temperatures, baking times, and rising patterns, and Jongin thinks he’s extremely lucky to at least have the unrestrained love of one parent given to him openly. Because he’s older now, he knows to be grateful, so his mother’s affection and kind thoughts alone are enough to fill the void him his father unintentionally dug out.

 

+

 

Joonmyun freezes. He can hardly believe what he’s just heard come out of Jongin’s mouth. “Can you say that again?”

Without delay, Jongin repeats “My mom wants to meet you,” all casual, like he’s telling Joonmyun that the weather today is going to be warm with a few clouds. His first instinct is to get angry because Jongin should know well enough that Joonmyun would be against the idea, but he holds back the acid bubbling in his chest. 

Jongin wouldn’t bring it up if he didn’t think it was important, so Joonmyun decides to ask, “…Why?” He’d noticed Jongin’s heartbeat fluctuating randomly ever since they woke up this morning, so he had been expecting Jongin to drop some sort of verbal bomb. Just not this. 

“What do you mean, why?” Jongin asks, confused, before he makes a soft _ah_ in understanding. Joonmyun used to fear that about Jongin, how he could get a grasp on Joonmyun’s state of mind almost instantly just by reading his body language. The same can’t be said for many people Joonmyun’s met; he’s always been very private as a person and it only got worse after the incident with Seungjun’s parents ended his relationship with Seungjun.

“My mom’s not like that, Joonmyun. She wouldn’t hurt you,” Jongin reassures him.

“I know,” Joonmyun says quickly, insides coiling into a tight ball of nerves. He doesn’t mean to make accusations or be cynical. Jongin doesn’t deserve that.      

“She’s happy that I found someone who I really like and is curious about what they’re like,” Jongin says, in further explanation. His eyes are so accepting, even when Joonmyun is being a shitty boyfriend and acting like Jongin’s mom is a monster.

“Oh.” Joonmyun is in awe of such… non-judgmental treatment. “You’ve talked to your mom about me?”

Jongin nods. “I first mentioned you in November to her. Do you remember, the day you slept at my place when I went to have lunch with my family?”

“I remember,” Joonmyun says. “That early?” Although he knew Jongin had started wanting him romantically earlier than Joonmyun was willing to acknowledge, it still comes as a bit of a shock to find out the extent of Jongin’s sincerity.

Seungjun had never mentioned talking to his parents about Joonmyun, and certainly never prompted a meeting between them. Joonmyun knows comparing Jongin with Seungjun isn’t healthy for their relationship so he usually won’t bring it up in conversation. But laying out their differences in his head repeatedly is fundamental in convincing the paranoid side of him that Jongin is always earnest about his feelings and promises. He refers to their future together often and without hesitation, and in turn, Joonmyun’s learned to peel his walls down layer by layer since he doesn’t seem to need them anymore.

“Although she pried for details, I didn’t reveal that much about you to her back then,” Jongin says. “I had no idea if you were ever going to warm up to me enough to tolerate a relationship.”

He seems to have this misconception that Joonmyun doesn’t like him nearly as much as he likes Joonmyun, which isn’t true at all, and Joonmyun wants to explain even if he isn’t sure how. “I don’t,” Joonmyun starts, and then backtracks. Breathes deeply, because Jongin is going to be smug as hell when he hears what Joonmyun has to tell him and fully understands. “Jongin, you know I… I’ve never not liked you.”

“What?” Jongin laughs, not really getting it.

“I liked you since the beginning,” Joonmyun revises, and Jongin’s smile transforms into an ‘o’ of surprise. “I’m not just tolerating you because you’re nice, or something. Do you… ugh.”

“Oh,” Jongin says, realization dawning on his face. “Joonmyun…”  

“You were really kind, and warm, and you always smelled good,” Joonmyun says. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want more from you, but I thought it was more important to be logical and not have expectations.”

He seems to have lost Jongin again, and he sighs as he tries yet another cycle of rewording.

“What I’m trying to say, is that I like you as much you like me, Jongin, if not more.”

There’s a moment where Jongin is still, unmoving and silent, before a smug smile replaces his dumb struck look. “Why, Joonmyun, I would have never known,” he says, and Joonmyun wants to bury himself a couple hundred feet into the ground. His face is probably as red as a beet, but he supposes the embarrassment is worth getting rid of Jongin’s insecurity for good.

Remembering his original question, Jongin asks, “Does this mean you’re okay with meeting my mom?”

“I…” Joonmyun blinks a couple times. The image of glass shattering and a too far away ceiling fade, on the sixth blink. “I guess.”

“Great,” Jongin says. “I’ll let her know.”

“How am I supposed to…” Joonmyun trails off. He gains the courage to start again when Jongin smiles at him, listening. “How should I act in front of her? What should I wear?”

It’s obvious that Jongin is amused, but his chuckle isn’t belittling. Instead, it’s reassuring, and Joonmyun thinks he may… love Jongin, who always treats his concerns, even the silly, laughable ones, with humility and respect.

“This isn’t a test, Joonmyun, it’s just my mom. Not a shark. She’s not going to hold you up to some impossible standard,” Jongin says. “Just wear what makes you comfortable. Be yourself." 

“That’s _cheesy,_ ” Joonmyun complains, but the words are reassuring all the same,  

“It’s too late,” Jongin says in a pseudo- _chaos is upon us voice. “_ You’ve signed up to deal with this cheeseball for life.” And Joonmyun is always surprised by how easy it is for Jongin to make him laugh, or want to, at least, if he doesn’t give in to the urge.

 

+

 

When it comes to the real thing though, Joonmyun is, in not so kind words, a coward. He remembers feeling the same, inescapable terror in middle school when they were being taught how to jump over hurdles in gym class. For one simple jump, Joonmyun would spend minutes and minutes calming himself so he could do well, but at the last second, he would always avoid the hurdle and then he’d have to start over at the back of the line. In the end, he was able to perform the jump and pass, but what leaves a deeper impact on him is the unforgettable anxiety of looking at that hurdle, feeling himself shrink until it was a towering, formidable mountain in front of him.

Just when Jongin is getting ready for the third time to arrange a date for his mother and Joonmyun to meet, Joonmyun loses his courage and asks for a postponement again. He looks away when he says it, dreading the disappointment that will undoubtedly appear on Jongin’s face.  

“This is the last time, okay?” Jongin says, pointing his phone at Joonmyun as a warning. He then adds menacingly, “You can’t run away _forever_.” The pout of his lips is an uncomfortable sight to stomach, and Joonmyun promises himself he won’t avoid meeting Jongin’s mother again.  

Although he’s clearly annoyed, Jongin doesn’t bring the topic up again for the rest of the day, to Joonmyun’s relief.

 

+

 

While being with Jongin has allowed Joonmyun to become more trusting and relaxed as a person, it’s also caused him to forget to keep his guard up. Which is why, two days later, when Jongin asks Joonmyun to accompany him to the hair salon in the afternoon for a haircut and coloring appointment, Joonmyun agrees without thinking much of it. They do that sort of thing together, like shopping for clothes or buying groceries as long as both of them are free. It’s not a big deal.

 

   +  

 

“This is NOT the hair salon,” Joonmyun says loudly, so that Jongin can hear his irritation from inside the car. The motion of the car had lulled him to sleep and he’d waken up when Jongin stopped, only to find that they’re in a residential area resembling that of one in Gangnam. His stomach feels like it’s going to turn all the contents inside out and he wants nothing except to go home.  

Jongin comes around on the other side to open Joonmyun’s door, but that doesn’t mean Joonmyun is going to come out. He wishes he had the power to become a puddle of cheese and drip everywhere, because then it will be a horrible, gooey mess. Jongin would learn the savory, drippy taste of regret, along with a lesson about manipulating Joonmyun even if it’s for his own good.

“Don’t be dramatic.” His voice is muffled halfway until he opens the door and tugs at Joonmyun’s arm. “Come on.” 

“I never agreed to this. You can’t make me,” Joonmyun says, voice transforming immediately into whining as Jongin forcibly unclips his seatbelt.

“You told me you were okay with meeting her,” Jongin argues. “She’s been waiting for a long time. You also cancelled your ass on me _three_ times.”

“Being okay with it is different from being ready!” Joonmyun says, albeit weakly, as he gets out of the car.

“If you keep psyching yourself out, you’ll never be ready. Why wait?” Jongin reasons, and gives Joonmyun a hard, but chaste kiss on the mouth, leaving Joonmyun’s lips feeling tingly. “I’ll be right next to you. You have nothing to worry about.” He slips his fingers in between Joonmyun’s, pulling his boyfriend towards the entrance of his parents’ home.

“What about your dad? And your sister? Are they out?” Joonmyun asks. He pales at the thought of having to deal with the alpha’s entire family, and his grasp on Jongin’s hand tightens until Jongin yelps in pain.

“Oh my god,” Jongin says, laughing in disbelief. “Joonmyun, it’s _fine_. They’re out on a trip. I knew you’d flip out so I specifically asked them to stay out of the house for a few hours.”

“Okay, I…” Joonmyun is temporarily appeased. Still unbearably panic-stricken, but at least he’s been prevented from having a screaming and crying episode. “Okay.”

“Ready? I’m pressing the doorbell,” Jongin says. After Joonmyun nods, he presses it, and the intercom crackles a little before the voice on the other end is discernible.

“Hello, who is it?”

“Hello Mrs. Choi, it’s Jongin.”

“Kim Jongin! Your mother is waiting, come in. All the doors are opened.” The front gates click and all of the locking mechanisms come undone, the metal sliding to either side of the high wall that surrounds Jongin’s house.

“Mrs. Choi is our housekeeper,” Jongin explains. “I’m not sure when she started working for us, but she’s been here so long that I can’t remember not having her around.” 

“I see,” Joonmyun says.

There are two women waiting in the doorway of the house, one with an orange, frilled apron on and the other wearing a beige sweater and white slacks. “Mrs, Choi,” Jongin greets cheerfully, as he hugs the one in the apron first, and then who Joonmyun assumes is his mother.

“Hi mom.” Jongin towers over her petite frame. Mrs. Choi walks back into the main hallway they’d entered from, disappearing into one of the rooms.

“Jongin-ah,” Jongin’s mother says, voice silky, before turning her attention to Joonmyun. He steps forward, slightly, so he’s not seen as being rude.

“Hello, Joonmyun-ssi.” She has short, wavy hair that falls just above her narrow shoulders and curves in at the ends. The roots are growing out, a peek of gray against dark black. Her eyes are gentle but steady on Joonmyun, who sees the resemblance between mother and son right away, in both their facial features and temperament. While Jongin has become a home-like haven for him, Joonmyun notices Jongin’s mother possesses a different kind of aura that’s a little like home, too. It draws people in, makes them feel like they could stay forever and she wouldn’t mind.

“Hello, Jongin’s mother,” Joonmyun says, bowing. “Thank you for having me.”

“You can call me mother, too,” she says, very directly. Her tone is straightforward, but it’s not demeaning. Jongin’s similar to her in that aspect as well, and she manages an interesting balance of sweetness and tenacity in her speech.

“Mother,” Joonmyun revises obediently.

“Very good,” she says. Joonmyun sort of feels like a puppy being trained. “Jongin’s told me so much about you.”

“Ah,” he says, swallowing a lump in his throat and making her laugh with his all too transparent uneasiness.

“Come and sit down,” Jongin’s mother says. “Make yourselves comfortable while I prepare some tea.”

After she leads them into the living room so they can sit on the couch, she disappears into the kitchen, and Joonmyun rests his hands on his knees while Jongin leaves no space in between their legs. “Don’t sit so close to me,” Joonmyun says. Jongin looks like he’s going to argue, but then he just scoots over a few inches so they’re not _as_ close anymore.

“It’s not that bad, right?” Jongin whispers, and Joonmyun would give him a snarky reply if it weren’t for how genuinely worried Jongin looks.

“No,” he says. “Your mom is… nice. I’m fine.”

“I’m glad you think so. She was very excited for today’s meeting with you.” Jongin beams, patting Joonmyun’s thigh before he stands and walks towards the kitchen. “Mom, do you need any help?”

“No, no,” she replies, ushering Jongin out while she holds a tea tray. She sets the tray down, and places mugs down on the table in front of where he and Joonmyun are sitting. “Joonmyun, would you like to eat something?” The combination of her hopeful eyes and Jongin’s subtle foot nudge implies that Joonmyun should be saying _yes,_ so he does.

It’s the right thing to do because Jongin’s mother brightens up even more. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she says, and makes another trip to the kitchen before she returns with a plate filled with various pastries. She gestures for Joonmyun to take one, but she changes her mind before he can move.

“I forgot! Wash your hands in the kitchen, first,” she says, herding them to the sink. “Have Jongin show you the soap and proper towels to dry your hands on. Jongin-ah, you know which ones to use, right?”

“Yes. Don’t worry,” Jongin says, winking at Joonmyun, who has no time to process it and be repulsed by the act. “Joonmyun, this is the soap. Use that towel on the oven handle.”

By now, his mother has gone back into the living room to wait for them, and Joonmyun soaps his hands up quickly, taking in his surroundings. Except for the stove, everything in the kitchen is either white or silver. The counters are neat, with spice racks and varying types of sauces in bottles lined up in the side closest to the wall.

“What is it?” Jongin asks, sensing his wandering eyes.  

He licks his lips. “Your mom is different from what I expected.” An understatement.

“What did you expect?” Jongin asks.

For one twisted, horrible second, when Joonmyun had walked through the door of Jongin’s family’s house, he couldn’t help but expect to see the same expression in Jongin’s mother’s face as the one on Seungjun’s mother’s. Disbelief. Anger. Contempt.

He and Seungjun had been caught kissing in the alpha’s bedroom when his parents arrived home early from a vacation. Joonmyun will never forget the memory of turning to look back at Seungjun, and realizing then, with agonizing clarity, that their relationship was never going to amount to anything more than a fling.

It’s difficult for Joonmyun to anticipate anything other than the worst in people, because he learned the hard way that love comes at a price with heavy consequences. He still can’t quite believe how… kind Jongin’s mother is. Her presence is warm, her smile reassuring, and she has a way of pinning people down with her attention without putting pressure on them.

“I’m not sure,” Joonmyun says. “Not this?” He wipes his hands on the towel Jongin had pointed out earlier. 

“She didn’t grow up rich, if that explains anything,” Jongin offers. “Let’s get back before she explodes from waiting too long.”

They sit down again, and Jongin’s mother is back to hovering, glancing back and forth between the pastries and Joonmyun. “Jongin told me that you don’t like overly sweet foods, so I adjusted the taste of these accordingly,” she adds, for further encouragement when she notices that he’s at a loss for which one to pick. Joonmyun has never been so overwhelmed in his life.

“I, um.” Joonmyun is tumbling, tumbling over his own words like a wheelbarrow down a hill with no one holding onto the handles. “Thank you very much. No one has done that for me, before.”

There is a burst of sour and slight sweet when he bites into the pastry. It’s a pleasant surprise. “This is really good,” he says after he finishes chewing and brushes at his lips discreetly to get stray crumbs.

“I’m so happy to hear that,” she says, clapping her hands together. She makes a sweeping motion around the entire plate. “Feel free to try the other ones, too.”

“These are really good, mom. Even better than the ones you made last time,” Jongin barges in, eating with considerably less grace than Joonmyun. There’s cream on his lips. Joonmyun resolutely focuses on drinking his tea and not the urge to wipe Jongin’s mouth for him.

“Of course I have,” she retorts, handing Jongin a napkin, and the smart from her comment makes Jongin pout. “Your mother is bound to improve when you only visit home once a year.”

At the chastising, Jongin squawks indignantly and Joonmyun is… amused, to say the least. “You’re exaggerating. I visit more often than that!”

Rather than replying to her son, she turns towards Joonmyun. “Joonmyun, do you know how much power you possess?” Her voice is sugary, managing to smother Jongin’s protests despite how much louder he is compared to her. “Jongin never wants to come home when I ask him to, but suddenly he’s calling me, asking what days I’m available and if I can make some food because ‘My Joonmyunnie’s finally agreed to come over.’”

“Oh my god,” Jongin says, mildly. “Mom, you’re going to _end_ me.”

“Would you like me to tell Joonmyun more?” she asks, pretending as if she had no ill intentions to begin with. She’s a _fun_ lady, Joonmyun thinks, as he laughs silently.

“ _No,_ ” Jongin answers, and she smiles.

Jongin has never called him _Joonmyunnie_ to his face, which Joonmyun files away for later, but right now he’s more entertained by the mortification Jongin’s mother is inflicting upon her son as he refuses to make eye contact with Joonmyun.

“Anyways,” she says, moving on. “Joonmyun, I’m very glad Jongin met you. He’s stopped his terrible playboy habits and become so grounded. So mature, and much calmer.”

Jongin shrieks, “Mom!”

“What,” she says, sticking out her tongue. “You think I just let you go off and live by yourself without monitoring you at least once in a while?”

“Invasion of privacy,” Jongin says, hotly.

“I’m your mother,” she says, in a voice that belongs in an education video where they say embarrassingly encouraging things like _don’t be ashamed of going through puberty, it’s perfectly normal_. “I’m responsible for making sure you’re always being safe.”

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” Jongin says, standing up abruptly. His face is red, but Joonmyun can tell he’s not angry. “You can expose more embarrassing things about me to Joonmyun. While I’m gone!”

When Jongin has walked out of hearing range, his mother leans toward Joonmyun so that their faces are closer together, as if she’s going to say something she wants to make sure Jongin doesn’t hear. Idly, Joonmyun wonders if this is when she’s going to threaten him to stay away from Jongin and make him leave, but she says something completely different.

“Joonmyun, you’ve looked very nervous this whole time. Am I making you uncomfortable?”

Joonmyun should unlearn his habits of pessimism.

If he’s being totally honest, Joonmyun is uncomfortable _everywhere_ because that’s just his personality, but he doesn’t think saying that will make things better. “No, not at all, Jongin’s mother –”

“’Mother,’” she corrects, and he nods.  

“Mother,” he repeats, when she doesn’t continue speaking, and she’s the one to nod this time, in approval.

“I know Jongin can be demanding at times. It’s because I spoiled him much more than I should have when he was younger, but he’s given me the impression that he likes you very much,” she says. “Is he not treating you well? You seem like you’re unhappy.” She fidgets with her fingers in her lap. 

“Oh,” Joonmyun says, frowning before he realizes what he’s doing and actively un-frowns. He’s not surprised, but it’s still disappointing to be told that his efforts don’t travel across very well when he’s been trying his best to appear at ease.  “It’s not Jongin – he’s very kind to me.”

“Oh?” Jongin’s mother says. “Then what is it that’s bothering you?”

Her simple question has a very loaded, convoluted answer, and Joonmyun is flailing, looking for a pebble in a lake of half truths and unfavorable memories. It takes him a few minutes before he can gather his thoughts and come up with a concise, but appropriate response. “I’m just…I came out of a bad relationship a few years ago, where the parents reacted rather violently to finding out about me. Jongin has helped me get over a lot of that, but this is my first time handling a situation with parents since then, so I’m having a bit of trouble.”

He makes sure to tie his words up neatly, with twine and knots so that his brokenness doesn’t show.

“Ah,” she nods, in understanding. Joonmyun is grateful that her eyes are not filled with pity. “Is Jongin the first person you’ve dated since then?”

“Yes,” Joonmyun says. “I… You say that I’ve grounded him, but he has grounded me, in a way, as well.”

It’s been more than two years since Joonmyun walked out of Seungjun’s parents’ house, feeling empty and abandoned and most of all, haunted by the dismissive look on the alpha’s face. In the time in between then and now, he’d floated aimlessly, all by himself, on an ocean whose waters had been cruel enough to pull him under for a rough storm but not kind enough to drown him entirely. Jongin is the ship that saw him, lifted him up out of the hellish waves and carried him back home.

“I’m glad.” The smile she gives him is calming. “Jongin has told me nothing but good things about you. After meeting you in person, I can understand why he’s so in love.”

Joonmyun flushes. _In love_ is such a strong phrase to use. He’s realized, in some obscure part of his mind, that he’s a little bit (very? hopelessly…) in love with Jongin, but the concept of Jongin being as much in love with him back keeps slipping through his fingers and changing forms. He says, “I’m… I’m not that special.”

“You’re special to him, and I think that alone is very powerful. As part of an older generation, I wished that Jongin would get a mate early like I did, but he grew up in an environment not at all similar to mine,” Jongin’s mother says. “He had to filter the people who really liked him from the people who just wanted the benefits of being a rich person’s friend, and unfortunately, the number that make it through that filter is very small.”

Until now, Joonmyun has never thought about what it was like to be in Jongin’s position, having people falling at his feet and being nice to him with ulterior motives. He recalls the loneliness in Jongin’s voice, sometimes, over the phone when Joonmyun calls to tell him he has to work late, or the way he clings stubbornly after sex just so Joonmyun will be forced to spend more time trying to free himself from Jongin’s iron embrace.

“Don’t think I’m trying to pressure you into anything,” Jongin’s mother says, pulling Joonmyun from his inner thoughts. “I’m just… it’s wonderful that Jongin’s met you because I don’t think he’s ever liked anyone else as much. Although he can be a handful, I hope you’ll be patient with him.”

“I’m coming in,” Jongin announces from the far end of the hallway, and Jongin’s mother winks at Joonmyun as an end to their secret conversation. When Jongin comes in, she pretends to have revealed all of his horrible secrets, making Jongin panic and reveal the details himself in his attempts to prove his mother wrong.

Later she asks Joonmyun more questions, but they’re standard concerned-parent inquiries. Where he’s from, what he does for a living, if he’d like to have some more pastries and when he can come again.

On their way home, Jongin asks, “If she didn’t tell you humiliating stories about me while I was in the bathroom, what _did_ she talk to you about?”

“This and that,” Joonmyun says, as he remembers how sure and insistent Jongin’s mother had been about Jongin being in love with him _._

 

+

 

In the evening, they go to bed early after ordering Chinese takeout and showering. Joonmyun is noticeably tired, having put on his best face for several hours in front of Jongin’s mother.

“So,” Jongin says, lifting his head so that his mouth is right next to Joonmyun’s ear. Joonmyun shows no sign of being awake, but his heartbeat isn’t slow enough for him to be unconscious yet. “When do you think you can meet my sister and dad?”

“I’ll kill you,” Joonmyun croaks, face down in his pillow, and Jongin keeps laughing until Joonmyun bops him in the nose with the orange dinosaur and yells at him to sleep.

 

+

 

On the last Wednesday of April, Jongin picks up the finalized rings, after multiple phone calls and visits in person to a jeweler Sehun’s mother had recommended for custom orders.

The inner bands are made of black Elysium diamond with smaller, black, princess cut diamonds embedded on the exterior. He takes it out of its small box to look at whenever Joonmyun isn’t around, feeling the weight in his fingers and contemplating over how he should present it to his boyfriend.

Joonmyun doesn’t like to bring attention to himself for any reason, good or bad, when they’re in public so it’s logical for Jongin to eliminate the possibility of a public proposal. In the presence of other people, Joonmyun might feel pressured to behave a certain way, and Jongin wants the genuine, raw reaction he knows Joonmyun won’t be afraid to show if it’s just the two of them.

He pinpoints two people who he could ask for help from: his sister and Sehun.

Since Sehun is in New York for modelling work and right now it’s in the middle of the night there, Jongin decides to call his sister.

She answers right away. “Hiya,” she says, papers rustling in the background.

“Do you have time to talk with me?” Jongin says. He drums his fingers on the armrest of his swivel chair. “It might be a while.”

“In that case,” she says, and there’s a dull thud of papers being dropped in stacks. Jongin doesn’t understand how there can be so much paperwork for her to do on the _weekend_. Dropping his business administration minor was the right decision. “Can you give me ten minutes? I’m almost finished, and I’ll call you right back when I’m done.”

“Sure,” Jongin says, and occupies himself with untangling the various cables twisted into vicious knots and loops around his workspace.

Like she promised, his sister calls back ten minutes later. “Hello,” she says, breezily, when Jongin picks up. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”

“I’m having trouble deciding how to propose to Joonmyun,” Jongin says. “I know he doesn’t like loud noises and being surprised in public, so that eliminates half my options already.” 

She makes a noise of disbelief, and pretends to sound offended as she says, “Don’t you think it’s rude and unfair to ask your sister about a proposal to a man you haven’t even let her meet yet?”

“I told you, he’s shy!” Jongin protests. “It’s not like I’m trying to hide him from you.”

“Right, right,” she says dismissively, pretending that she’s not going to pay attention even though Jongin knows she will. She and Sehun have a lot in common. They’re both excellent listeners who try to mask the fact that they care with high pitched giggling and childish antics.

Jungah clears her throat theatrically before she finally recollects the maturity of someone her age. “So how do you propose we go about solving this issue of yours, dongsaeng?”

“I can describe what he’s like,” Jongin says. “And maybe you can give me suggestions based on that?”

“Sure,” she agrees. Jongin starts rattling off facts about Joonmyun that he thinks will give her a useful insight, even including far stretched details like how Joonmyun prefers straightforward TV shows and hates long winded plots that go everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Jungah listens patiently and inserts a question here and there when Jongin runs out of things to say.

In the end, she recommends a simple and private proposal. “I don’t think it has to be particularly clever, just authentic,” she says. “He seems to like it best when you’re laying everything in the open since he doesn’t care about trivial details.” 

“That’s a good point,” Jongin says. “It’s kind of what I wanted to do, but I think I needed confirmation that going about it in a simpler manner would be the best choice.”

“Of course, it’s because no one, not even you, trusts your teeny tiny pea brain to—"  

“I was going to tell you thank you, but you just ruined that,” Jongin says.

“You’re _welcome,_ ” Jungah says, her giggling fit loud and obnoxious even through the phone. Regardless of her reputation as a brilliant businesswoman at the company or her sometimes decent~~ advice, she’ll always be an infuriating sister to Jongin. “Good luck, my little Jongin!”

He considers just hanging up, but comes up with an even better way to spite her. “Well, now I’m not going to let you meet him,” Jongin says, venomously.

“Hey!”

 

+

 

The weather is starting to thaw out and daily averages are rising into the high sixties, so Jongin and Joonmyun head to the park for an hour of casual soccer. Joonmyun is fast, and light on his feet, rendering Jongin sweaty and frustrated as he tries to get around his boyfriend’s sneaky turns and maneuvers across the grass. Despite all his victories, Joonmyun doesn’t gloat or even bask in his total destruction of Jongin’s soccer star dreams, which, for some reason only serves to make Jongin madder.

“I’m going to beat you into the ground,” Jongin huffs, hands coming to rest at his knees before he collapses into the grass, and Joonmyun smiles at him demurely from where he’s standing. 

“Another round?” he asks, taking three steps to stand right above Jongin. Jongin goat-screams in violent dissent. “Alrighty then,” he says, and his soft chuckle, even after he’s crushed Jongin’s athletic ego into the ground and stomped on it for extra measure, is still ranked #1 in Jongin’s personal list of the world’s most beautiful noises.

(In second place is the way he says _Jonginnie,_ extra sweet and sticky, and in third place, the sound of his moan right when he comes.)

In just a few minutes, the sun has moved away from behind the tree providing Jongin shade, and he squints when light hits his face, rolling over to the left until his face is in shadows again. “Come here and sit next to me,” he fake-commands, patting to his right, and Joonmyun walks away for a moment to pick up the soccer ball. He spins it in his hands expertly as he comes closer to Jongin, and then sits down, crossing his legs.

Jongin asks, “What do you want to do for your birthday?” He’d marked it carefully, on the calendar he never uses. Being with Joonmyun, for whatever reason, has made him want to pay better attention to dates.

(An especially important date is February 11, the day Joonmyun’s letter had come in the mail and Jongin had no longer needed to memorize the heat, form, shape of Joonmyun’s lips against his. Jongin had ripped out the February page while Joonmyun was in the shower and scribbled glossy, ballpoint hearts all over that day’s square.) 

“Hmm?” There’s a particularly prominent vein on Joonmyun’s forearm, and Jongin reaches over so he can feel it shifting slightly under the skin.

“Your birthday’s coming up,” Jongin says, with more emphasis, before grinning cheekily. “Do you want to go to an amusement park –” (Joonmyun groans) “or maybe a fancy dinner? It’s all up to you.” 

He needs at least a basic idea of what Joonmyun’s planning to do on that day, so he can figure out which part of it he’s going to worm the proposal in.

“Can we just stay home and relax?” Joonmyun asks, after deliberating for a minute. “I haven’t had a day off in a while besides the weekends, and those are too short.”

“That’s fine with me. Are any of your friends or coworkers going to invite you out?”

“No,” Joonmyun says. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Do you want cake?” Jongin asks, shifting to rest on his side as he props his head against the palm of his hand.

“Sure,” Joonmyun answers.

Jongin lays his hands flat on his stomach and rolls over into Joonmyun’s space. “What kind of cake?" 

“Surprise me,” Joonmyun says, with a chuckle. He scratches at Jongin’s stomach, clicking his tongue at him like he’s a puppy. “You’re good at finding the stuff I like before I do.”   

+

 

The night before Joonmyun’s birthday is one of the most sleepless nights of Jongin’s life.

(Even when he had been preparing to take college entrance exams, he hadn’t lost this much sleep because exhaustion was a constant and sleeping was a form of escape, like slipping into a deep, warm cocoon of nothing with no expectations pulling at his fingers, his toes, his hair. It was hard to get up in the mornings and face reality. All he had waiting for him was another day of studying from morning until night, to the point where his eyes couldn’t be forced open no matter how much coffee or energy boosters he drank.)    

This, is a little different. Very different, actually. Mentally preparing for his proposal to Joonmyun is nowhere as taxing as studying twenty different subjects had been, but instead of having others’ expectations weighing perilously over his head, Jongin now has only the burden of his own doubts and high standards crawling up his back. It should be easier, because no one’s watching him anymore to make sure he performs well in school every single second. Yet… the possibility of messing up what he currently has with Joonmyun makes Jongin’s hands clammy and his neck cold.

He rolls out of bed to go to the kitchen and get a drink of water. His hands tremble when he tips the front of the pitcher down to pour water into his mug.

He’s usually a deep sleeper, so he’s unaccustomed to the lack of energy that comes with getting only four to five hours of shut-eye. His first impulse is to fire off a whiny text to Joonmyun about how lethargic he feels, and he’s dismayed when he realizes he can’t tell Joonmyun that without raising suspicion on Joonmyun’s part.    

The cake shop he ordered from doesn’t open until 10 am, but it’s only a little after nine, he realizes, after his cuckoo clock chimes loudly in reminder. Since sleep isn’t going to come to him that easily, he decides not to go back to bed, but to try and relax before he picks up the cake and heads over to Joonmyun’s place.  

Jongin throws on a sweatshirt, and the pair of jeans he knows Joonmyun likes from the way he eyes Jongin’s legs whenever Jongin wears them.

He nearly drops the cake box in the twenty foot walk that separates the cake shop from his car’s parking spot, but reflexes save him and he manages to grab a hold of it again before it gets smashed to smithereens inside its container. When he successfully transports it into the passenger’s side of the car, he opens the lid to double check that everything is still in place. Thankfully, everything _looks_ like they’re where the baker left them, so he goes ahead and drives to Joonmyun’s place.

Joonmyun looks really… happy when he opens the door to find Jongin standing there. His eyes drift down to Jongin’s pants, and he smiles even wider, heartbeat stuttering in appreciation.

Jongin holds back a laugh, because Joonmyun is _so_ easy to please. “Happy birthday,” he says, holding out the cake box.

Joonmyun takes it from him with a cheerful _thank you_ , and Jongin breathes a sigh of relief, clutching his chest for personal comic relief because the well-being of the cake is _finally_ no longer dependent on him.

 

\+  

 

Jongin has the ring box on him the whole day, and he comes close to exposing himself a few times before he’s ready because his pockets are dangerously unreliable.

Joonmyun hasn’t noticed anything strange, yet, because he’s been in high spirits and his scent is flooded with the buzz of distinct satisfaction.

They didn’t have very much planned out for the day, so they mostly just ate cake, played board games, and watched movies Joonmyun wanted to catch up on.

While Joonmyun’s gaze is focused directly on the TV, Jongin takes advantage of Joonmyun’s absentmindedness to slip the ring on his finger. At the sudden contact, Joonmyun looks over to Jongin’s face first and not his hand. He probably thinks Jongin’s bored and playing some harmless prank again.

“What are you doing?” he asks, before he looks down, and just…

There have been multiple events in Jongin’s life where he was nervous to the point of nearly keeling over, and they spin through his mind now, as if he’s a hamster running in a wheel. Messing up on that one note at his piano recital when he was nine… asking his father tentatively, when he was twenty, if he could focus on art and forget about his business administration minor… and at the age of twenty two, waiting for his professor to give commentary on his graduating project in university.

This moment beats all of them, Jongin realizes, as Joonmyun looks back and forth between him and the ring, then just gapes at Jongin for about ten seconds. Jongin’s heart is hanging by a thread at the edge of a cliff, and he is frozen, ring box clutched tightly in his fist, any words originally on his tongue scattering all the way to his toes and refusing to come out.

Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten the rings. Maybe Joonmyun is going to take his heart and smash it on a glacier sliding across the Antarctic and laugh in his face, because Jongin is pitiful –

“This is really pretty,” is the first thing Joonmyun says, and Jongin’s brain screeches to a stop. _Pretty? → compliment → good sign…_

It’s on autopilot as he replies with, “Well, yeah, I hope you think it’s pretty because I got it custom designed _for you_ –” and then the autopilot powers off as his brain comes back to life. Though, it doesn’t do a very good job of processing because he starts freaking out and loses all ability to rationalize.

No ‘yes,’ no ‘no’? Is… is that a _rejection?!_

“You don’t want to be mine?” he blurts out, voice wobbly, because he’s the premium, grade AA egg level of _dumb._ Joonmyun looks genuinely alarmed and also, lost.

He grabs Jongin’s arms, which feel like jelly now to Jongin, and asks, “Jongin? What are you saying all of a sudden?”

“I’m proposing to you!” Jongin says, miserably, and Joonmyun’s eyes widen. Jongin was supposed to be suave, not!! _mess up his proposal by preventing Joonmyun from even realizing it was one_. This is the worst. He’s the worst. “I’m asking you to be my mate, officially, so we can live together and I can make you food all the time and I can kiss you silly–”  

Joonmyun catches him off guard by kissing him, fiercely, like Jongin is the first piece of land he sees after spending years drifting on vast, borderless oceans. His hands are in Jongin’s hair, grip secure but not too tight, and five and a half kisses later, Jongin is left with lips that slightly sting and a teary eyed Joonmyun blinking at him.

And maybe it’s weird to some people that Joonmyun has never said he loves Jongin, explicitly, but seeing him cry like this, Jongin realizes that Joonmyun’s said it in everything else he’s ever shown Jongin. When they’re outside, he’ll walk on the part of the sidewalk closest to the road and make sure that Jongin’s on the safer side of him. If Jongin’s upset, Joonmyun knows how to talk to him, often lifting his mood just by providing him with new, funny reptile discoveries and random anecdotes from his workplace. Jongin might have wanted to fill in the cracks of Joonmyun’s armor so that he’d be stronger, but in turn, Joonmyun has warmed corners of Jongin’s life that he didn’t even know were cold and lonely.

“Is that a yes?” he asks.

Joonmyun hugs him, nose rubbing against the side of Jongin’s neck. “How could it be anything but?”    

 

+

 

As a birthday request, Joonmyun asks Jongin if he can be the one to fuck Jongin today, instead of being the bottom like usual. 

With the way Joonmyun kisses him as he slides in, steady and careful, Jongin realizes it was unnecessary to have panicked so much about how the proposal would have turned out. Joonmyun has been his, and only his, for a long, long time.  

 

+

 

The engagement party for Jungah and Minseok is scheduled for early August, the bonding ceremony for Jongin and Joonmyun in late September. Jongin’s mother is going crazy over the preparations, and in the time that he’s not being hounded to help her decide on tablecloth patterns and choose from twelve supposedly different bouquet styles that look _identical_ , Jongin takes Joonmyun suit shopping.

The hardest part about suit shopping is actually convincing Joonmyun to go for a custom made suit, which is difficult if not nearly impossible. In daily life, their spending habits aren’t that far off from each other’s, but Jongin comes from a background where appearances are first priority due to cameras and publicity, so to him, in a high profile event like this, the money is worth it. 

“Can’t you just make an announcement like ‘woohoo, yo homeboy Kim Jongin is getting a mate, toot toot,’ and be done with it?” Joonmyun had asked sourly in response to a third round of Jongin’s incessant badgering, and Jongin could only laugh at the fact that Joonmyun had gotten through that entire question with a straight face.  

Later, when Joonmyun was busy answering emails on his laptop in bed, Jongin had slithered into his lap (clumsily but successfully, mind you) and used high pitched aegyo with the orange dinosaur plushy in front of his face. What ended up working the best was a repetitive, nasally _Oppa~~_ that ultimately made Joonmyun take off his glasses and pretend to strangle Jongin with his hands before he agreed to get the suit.

When they go in for the final fittings and Joonmyun comes out of the changing room looking like a million dollars, Jongin thinks that buying suits made specifically for Joonmyun’s figure (mightttttttttt) have been more of just a secret indulgence for him than a necessity to keep up appearances for the public.

(Because honestly, _fuck_ whoever thinks Joonmyun isn’t good enough as he is… Jongin is going to focus on more important things. Such as how much he likes the way Joonmyun’s ass and waist looks in an all-black, three piece suit.)

“You’re beautiful,” he says, sighing, and Joonmyun blushes until his face is as bright and red as the bow headband Jongin bought him from Lotte World.

 

+

 

Jongin snatches the opportunity to give proper congratulations to his sister and Minseok as soon as they arrive, herding Joonmyun with expert maneuvering to where the couple are standing before anyone else notices. Jungah is unbelievably radiant, giggling at Minseok whenever he so much as winks at her, and Jongin wonders if he’s got the same star struck look in his eyes any time he’s talking to Joonmyun.

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Joonmyun,” his sister says, once Jongin and Joonmyun have given their congratulatory greetings. “Jongin’s been hiding you away from me.”

Jongin opens his mouth to protest, but she shushes him and continues speaking. “All our mother does is talk about how polite and likeable you were when you came to our house, and she’s very finicky about people.”

“Thank you. I… um, I think she’s exaggerating,” says Joonmyun, who’s flustered with three pairs of eyes on him. In reassurance, Jongin flattens his palm against the small of Joonmyun’s back, and he receives a grateful smile in return.

They exchange more pleasantries after Jungah has thoroughly tested the limits of how red Joonmyun’s pale skin can go with her teasing while Jongin and Minseok watch in amusement. Despite their fun, there are other guests waiting to talk to Jungah and Minseok, so Jongin makes a smooth exit by asking where the appetizers are and leads Joonmyun away.

“You two look so alike. It’s as if you’re almost twins,” Joonmyun comments, as Jongin gives the food at the table a once-over.

“But I’m the most handsome, right?” Jongin asks, batting his eyelashes seductively, even if they’re short and sparse compared to his sister’s mascara coated ones.

Joonmyun doesn’t answer, which is unlike him, because even if he hates it when Jongin tries to be cute and fish for compliments, he’ll still humor Jongin to a certain extent. Jongin has to stop batting his eyelashes so hard in order to see whatever it is that has more of Joonmyun’s attention than he does.

Joonmyun’s eyes are deadlocked on something. Someone, to be more accurate, standing near the podium in the far left of the room.

“What are you looking at?” Jongin asks. He can hear Joonmyun’s heart pounding.  

“There’s someone standing over there that looks like Seungjun,” Joonmyun says, breaking his stare to look up at Jongin. His gaze is clear, unwavering. These days he’s getting more and more comfortable with speaking what’s on his mind. “I wonder if I’m imagining things.”

“It’s not unlikely,” Jongin says, scanning the crowd, then stopping because it’s not like he knows what Seungjun looks like. “My sister wanted a small engagement party, but this is what happens when you’re a CEO and social obligations force you to invite eighty more people than you want to.”  He straightens out the front of Joonmyun’s vest, letting his hands drift down and linger a little longer at Joonmyun’s hips than necessary.

“You’re so obvious,” Joonmyun chastises him as he moves away from Jongin’s touch. “This is your sister’s engagement party, not a club. There are people watching.”

“There are people waiting to hit on you,” Jongin says. Joonmyun looks really nice and handsome in the suit Jongin picked out for him. “Well, it doesn’t matter. They’ll see the ring when they approach you.

“What if I tell them it’s for fashion?” Joonmyun jokes, making Jongin sputter a _y-you wouldn’t!_ behind him as he walks away. 

Jongin follows after Joonmyun, but stops when he sees a man approaching his mate from the side. “Joonmyun?” the man says. Joonmyun’s name rolls oddly off his tongue, like he’s not sure if he’s made a mistake, and Jongin pieces it together once he starts getting hints of sourness in Joonmyun’s scent.

Seungjun.

As soon as he realizes, he closes the distance between him and Joonmyun, curling a protective arm around Joonmyun’s waist. It doesn’t go unnoticed by Seungjun, whose eyes flicker down briefly at the action and then drift to the ring on Joonmyun’s hand. “Is this your boyfriend, Joonmyun?”

Jongin’s eyes flash red, and Seungjun takes half a step back in polite retreat. “I think it’s been a long time since it was your job to care about me, Seungjun,” Joonmyun replies, curt.  

Seungjun scratches the back of his neck, looking less confident and more… at a loss from Joonmyun’s coldness. He changes his approach. “I know it’s late and you probably don’t want to hear it,” he says. “But I wanted to apologize for how things ended, back then. Is it okay if we talk? Just the two of us.”

Despite how easy it would be for Jongin to just launch himself at the alpha, he forces the urge to die down and waits for Joonmyun to make the first move.

As if he senses the growl that’s preparing to escape from Jongin’s throat, Joonmyun rubs at Jongin’s arm soothingly.  “Jonginnie, I’ll go talk to him for a few minutes,” he says. “That okay?”

“Will _you_ be okay?” Jongin asks, quietly.

“Yes,” Joonmyun says.  

Jongin stares at him for a few seconds to make sure he really is fine with it and not just obliging to avoid making a scene. Joonmyun’s eyes are unfaltering as they stare back into Jongin’s, and Jongin sighs in defeat.

“Fine,” he says, giving in.

 

+

 

Jongin leaves the two of them alone to go find his sister, and they step out of the room into the much emptier hallway so that they can have some privacy. “He’s quite protective,” Seungjun remarks. It cuts through the quiet of the air. He makes it sound like Jongin’s a control freak instead of a concerned boyfriend, but Joonmyun isn’t so foolish that he’ll let an outsider tell him what Jongin is.

“Then it’s a good thing I like them protective, isn’t it?” says Joonmyun with an ironic smile. After years of harsh self-evaluation and painstakingly rebuilding what remained of his confidence, he’s finally comfortable enough in his own skin to stop sacrificing his identity for someone else’s comfort. He’d constantly lived in fear of the day he might have to face Seungjun again, but having Seungjun stand in front of him right now – it’s oddly, unexpectedly painless in comparison to the hundred different scenarios Joonmyun’s imagined in his head. He’s waited and waited to rip off a scab and inevitably bleed from it, only to find that the skin is already healed underneath, and it’s satisfying to see Seungjun look so taken aback at what Joonmyun’s become.  

“You’ve changed,” he says.

“It’s been over two years.” Joonmyun plays with the black ring on his hand. “People aren’t set in stone.”

“I know that. I’m just surprised,” Seungjun says. “You didn’t talk like that, before.” Joonmyun tries to catalogue the differences in his appearance from two years ago, but finds himself unable to remember in much detail what Seungjun used to look like. He must have moved on more than he thought. “If you think about it, isn’t he kind of similar to me?”

“What?” There has to be some mistake, some trick Joonmyun’s ears are playing on him.

“Your current guy,” Seungjun says. “He’s Kim Jungah’s little brother. Jongin, right? You into rich guys now or something?”

Joonmyun is so incredulous that all he can do is laugh. It’s both horrible and ridiculous that Seungjun thinks Joonmyun would purposely seek out someone like him to date _more than once._ “I don’t remember your sense of humor being this good,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“If you have to know, Seungjun, you’re the last person I’d compare to him,” Joonmyun says, forcing himself to pull the corners of his lips up because he doesn’t know what might happen if he doesn’t at least pretend to be calm. He wants to scream, and kick, and shout, but he stands still as he continues to speak. “A month after we met, Jongin told his mother about me. He took me to meet her as soon as I agreed, and she made pastries for me while paying attention to the fact that I don’t even like sweet things.”

Seungjun looks hurt and confused. “Is this about how my parents treated you? I’m sorry about that.”

He says it so trivially, as if a few words are enough to erase months and months of insomnia, as if he had done anything besides watch Joonmyun walk out that day, hand bleeding into the carpet and heart shredded into nothing. The sick side of Joonmyun hopes that Seungjun’s housekeepers never got his blood stain out, so that the reminder of his presence and his heartbreak could at least mark their floors in return for the permanent damage they’d left on him.

“It’s not only that,” Joonmyun says. His entire face is burning, but he won’t cry. “From the start, Jongin has never been afraid of showing the world that he cares about me. I’m not a casualty of his failed dreams and unsteady relationships, and I’m certainly not some convenient tool for him to manipulate and build his own ego up with.”

Every one of Jongin’s actions towards Joonmyun is motivated by the desire to make Joonmyun feel wanted and respected, never by the need to make himself more powerful. 

Seungjun, on the other hand, had been trapped by his parents’ dreams, living a life he didn’t want with a fiancé he felt nothing for. The one thing he had control over was Joonmyun, so he used every opportunity to manipulate the omega into doing what he wanted. All so he could make himself feel stronger. He’d mistaken Joonmyun’s false constraint for real submission, and Joonmyun can’t believe that even after all these weeks, months, years, while he’s moved forward, Seungjun has been standing still as a man who thinks the world is going to revolve around him forever.

“Joonmyun.” Seungjun is frowning, not sure what to make of Joonmyun’s overdue resentment bubbling to the surface. In their relationship, Joonmyun had swallowed all of his frustrations so that Seungjun would only associate him with happiness. He’d done that thinking it would make their days together last longer, but in the end, that strategy hadn’t worked out so well.  

He studies Seungjun’s face. The familiar curve of a thin-lipped pout, the sharp intensity in the shape of his eyes. If Joonmyun were twenty five again, he might fall for that face. But he is twenty eight, and he’s been lucky enough to meet someone who loves him unconditionally, who wants to hold his hand in public and tell him he’s wonderful every chance they get.

“There’s no point in me telling you these things,” Joonmyun says. “It’s too late to fix anything.”

“You know, I don’t think I’ve really ever understood you, and I’m sorry that I didn’t… try harder,” Seungjun says. “Whenever something happened and anyone else would be angry or upset in that situation, you were always indifferent. It seemed like you didn’t need me nearly as much as I needed you.”

Heart of steel, body of volcanic rock. Seungjun doesn’t realize he’d taken Joonmyun’s lack of complaints, hidden crying, and fake smile for granted.

“I forced myself to be accommodating,” Joonmyun explains, angrily. “I was trying so hard for you, and you stepped all over me in return the moment your parents threatened to take away your life of comfort.”

“I was a coward,” Seungjun says. “I was scared to choose the path that hadn’t been paved out already. I’m sorry I couldn’t be a better person for you, Joonmyun.”

If Joonmyun was a better person, he’d give in and accept Seungjun’s apology already.

But he’s not. Thanks to Seungjun and his fear of choosing a path he hadn’t seen someone else walk, Joonmyun’s spent years being jaded, terrified of anything that moved behind him, even his own shadow. An apology is going to undo very little of that damage, and Joonmyun doesn’t think it’s wrong to tell Seungjun as such.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he says. “If you’d told me back then you were sorry, I might have been able to forgive you. But telling me now, after years of absolutely nothing, is really unproductive, and it’ll only bring back bad memories for both of us.”

“I didn’t mean to make you upset,” Seungjun says. “I really did want to apologize.”

“If apologizing encompasses making disrespectful comments about my boyfriend and victimizing yourself when you weren’t the one being publicly shamed like a power hungry _slut_ ,” Joonmyun says, “you might want to review the definition of what being sorry means.”

He’s not trying to be difficult, but the last thing he can offer Seungjun is the knowledge that he won’t understand or connect with anyone unless he actually works for it and stops wallowing in self-pity, wondering why his life doesn’t work out the way he wants it to. Although his parents’ money may have given him access to power and things Joonmyun can never even dream of touching, their wealth didn’t teach Seungjun how to reflect upon himself when his selfish actions ended up wielding spikes in place of flowers. 

“You’re… right. That’s not what I meant to say at all,” Seungjun says. He runs his hand through his hair. “Would you let me try again, at a better apology?”

Joonmyun nods.

“I’m sorry for not defending you in front of my parents. For not being strong enough to protect you from public humiliation and continuing to blame you for the relationship I initiated even after everything was over,” Seungjun says. Joonmyun closes his eyes. “I know it can’t mean anything to you now, but I did… love you even if I was shit at showing it. What I’m most sorry for is that I couldn’t be proud of my feelings and gave you treatment you didn’t deserve at all.”  

As he falls silent, Joonmyun opens his eyes. From the expression on Seungjun’s face, Joonmyun can tell he means everything he said, and honestly, that’s all he needed. 

“Thank you,” Joonmyun says, letting over seven hundred days of muted bitterness start to fade away. “I forgive you.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Joonmyun hums as casual permission.       

“Do you think,” Seungjun asks, “we would have worked out if we tried?”

Joonmyun smiles at him. It’s surreal to look back at this man and remember that at one point in time their love had seemed passionate enough to withstand anything, to last forever. “Why should we dwell on that?” he asks.

“I want to know what you think.”

“Alright.” Joonmyun flexes his fingers. “Then tell me first: if you were given a second chance to go back to that day and pick between me and your parents’ support, what would you choose? Knowing that choosing me would result in you being disowned and forced to survive on your own, with no money and no connections.”

In Seungjun’s hesitation, is where Joonmyun finds his answer.

He says, with a wry laugh, “For a long time, I dreamed that you were going to show up and tell me you weren’t really getting married. That you were going to come back to me.” He pauses. “I realize now that it was a naïve way to think because, after all this time, you still don’t know what you really want.”

“I wanted to,” Seungjun says. His eyes are so sad. Joonmyun is going to stomp out the remaining light in them, and he won’t feel guilty because he’s only telling the truth. “But I –”

“You’re afraid,” Joonmyun finishes for him, softly. “And so am I. So to answer your question, no, I don’t think we would have worked out no matter how hard we tried. Two people who are terrified together don’t go anywhere except deeper inside their heads to build more hatred towards each other, and that’s not how I want to live my whole life. Do you?”

“I guess not,” Seungjun says, subdued. Joonmyun wonders if he’s content to live the rest of his life under the jurisdiction of his parents. 

“Have a good life, Seungjun. Let’s not cross paths again,” Joonmyun says as he steps away from the alpha and back into the main room, where the past for them has fizzled out and the present is waiting for him.

 

+

 

There are so many people conversing and drinking that it would have been hard for Joonmyun to find Jongin in the crowd, but Jongin seems to have been watching for his return because he ends up at Joonmyun’s side in less than a minute. Their shoulders brush together lightly, and Joonmyun is at ease to have that familiar warmth next to him again. 

“You okay?” Jongin asks.

Joonmyun nods. “Yes.” For the longest time, he’d feared having to confront the unresolved bitterness he felt towards Seungjun that wound itself tightly around his neck and refused to let go. Instead, he’s found closure in their conversation, and confirmed what he knew all along, even if he was afraid to think about it at times. That… no amount of time or level of persuasion would have pushed Seungjun to free fall from his safety bubble and openly love Joonmyun if it meant he had to give up the protection of his parents.

“I’m glad. Did you give him a piece of your mind?”

“I did. Thank you for not tackling him,” he says, laughing when Jongin’s originally playful eyes widen like a deer’s in headlights.

“Was it that obvious?” Jongin asks. “Sorry, I –”

“It’s fine,” Joonmyun reassures him. “I could tell how much you wanted to, and I appreciate the fact that even then, you let me handle it on my own.”

“You’re perfectly capable of beating him up by yourself,” Jongin says. “I didn’t want to be the dumb, raging, alpha boyfriend who was jealous over a stupid ex.”

“Jealous?” Joonmyun is puzzled. Jongin doesn’t really need to be jealous, because it’s been a long time since Joonmyun’s heart has jumped and skipped and stuttered for anyone else besides him.

“I don’t know, feelings don’t make sense,” Jongin says, shaking his head like it’ll get his bangs out of the way before he realizes his hair has been gelled back. “He looks like the kind of guy who could twist the real story so much that by the end, you would be willing to go back to him.”

“Jonginnie.” Joonmyun uses the nickname because it’s useful for when he needs Jongin to pay attention to what he’s about to say. Jongin’s eyes are instantly on him, waiting.

“What is this?” Joonmyun asks, as he holds up his hand. 

“The ring I gave you?” Jongin says, like he’s asking instead of answering.

Joonmyun smiles. “Very good. And what does it mean?”

If anyone else happens to see Jongin’s expression of horror, they’d think Joonmyun had asked him to dive headfirst into a pool of snakes rather than a simple question. “That... we’re going to be mates?”

“No,” Joonmyun deadpans, and Jongin’s flinch is priceless. The only thing better than that flinch is the way his gaze gets soft and sappy as Joonmyun gets around to his real point. “We _are_ mates, and I didn’t choose to be your mate just because this ring is pretty. I chose you because you’re the first and last thing on my mind on any given day, and every other thought in between. Do you still think you need to be jealous?”

There’s a stretch of lull in between Joonmyun’s calmly stated disclosure and Jongin’s total awareness of said disclosure, before the dam breaks and Jongin’s feelings pour out like an unstoppable flood. “J-Joonmyun,” he says, half wailing, half whispering because they’re still in public, and his face is so ugly when he’s scrunching it together like that, but Joonmyun loves him all the same.

“I was going to split his head open,” Jongin mumbles, when they’re preparing to leave. He ushers Joonmyun out of the elevator first and points to the direction of his car. “How dare he talk to you again when I was standing next to you? What a shithead.”

He’s fumbling with his keys and nearly drops them, making his voice go higher and louder in panic. His added volume and crude language has a couple nearby looking at them oddly, and Joonmyun holds in his laughter until the two strangers have gotten into their car.

“It’s all over, anyways,” Joonmyun says, when his giggles die down. “Isn’t that nice?”

“I guess,” Jongin says, but he’s still grumpy.

The car ride back to Jongin’s place is quiet. It’s stuffy in the car, but the AC takes a few minutes to start working, so Joonmyun rolls the window down, letting the cold air breeze past his face.

He takes a deep breath, inhaling, then exhaling as far out as he can. Right along with his exhale, he finally releases the shards of Seungjun that have remained in his flesh since he was twenty five, and feels… free.

 

+

 

At his and Joonmyun’s mating ceremony, Jongin meets Joonmyun’s parents for the second time and Joonmyun’s brother for the first. 

The siblings look alike, but it’s obvious how different their personalities are just by looking at their posture and body language. Joonmyun’s brother looks like a no-nonsense type of guy, who _would_ say all of the things Joonmyun has told Jongin he’s said. He’s polite to Jongin, but he definitely doesn’t like Jongin as much as Joonmyun’s parents do, and he spends most of the afternoon and evening speaking to his wife in hushed tones.

Probably because he’s used to it, Joonmyun isn’t bothered by his brother’s standoffish behavior. Jongin brings it up anyway, and unexpectedly, makes Joonmyun laugh.

“What is it?” Jongin asks, bewildered.

“He’s not being rude,” Joonmyun explains. “He’s kind of always like that, but he’s feeling awkward because the last time we talked, it was him telling me that our relationship would fail for sure because I’m incapable of keeping anyone for long.”     

“Is he going to tell you sorry for that?” Jongin asks.

“Believe me,” Joonmyun says, watching his brother standing in the corner with his brother’s wife. “Him tucking his tail in between his legs like that is the best apology I’ll ever get.” 

Thankfully, the entire ceremony runs from start to finish with no complications. Sehun and Joonmyun get along much better now, without misunderstandings to keep a distance between them, and they even team up to bully Jongin, who exclaims multiple times that it is _unfair_ but no one listens.

Jongin’s mother, in between running around making sure all of her preparations are going well, strikes up an unlikely friendship with Joonmyun’s mother, who’s quiet and reserved but smiles at almost everything Jongin’s mother says.

Even if everything goes according to plan, Jongin is exhausted by the time he and Joonmyun get to his apartment, and he wants nothing more than to lay his head down into Joonmyun’s lap.   

“You know,” Jongin says, and Joonmyun turns to look at him in surprise because his voice comes out huskier than usual. “I’ve been waiting to strip you out of that suit since this morning.”

Joonmyun’s eyes are mischievous. They’re also alert, watching for a move on Jongin’s part. “Wasn’t it a long day for you, then?”

Much _too_ long. There had been an exhausting buzz dancing underneath his skin all day, strengthening its grip on Jongin’s attention every time he looked at Joonmyun and couldn’t touch him the way he _really_ wanted to. Joonmyun hadn’t been very helpful, with his dark eyeliner, enchanting smile, and fleeting hands on Jongin’s hip, but Jongin tried his best to keep it together so that the whole room wouldn’t smell like his lust for his omega. 

“Come here,” Jongin says. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you targeting all my sensitive spots.”

“It’s fun to see you squirm in front of so many people,” Joonmyun laughs, and lets Jongin start pulling his clothes off of him.  

“ _Turning me on_ in front of my parents and your parents and a hundred other people is not _fun,_ ” Jongin says, as he lays Joonmyun onto his bed and kisses at his neck tenderly. He rolls the skin between his teeth until Joonmyun yelps. A bruise will probably form, and it is payment for Joonmyun’s teasing. “It is also extremely inappropriate.” 

“For you, no, but –” Joonmyun breaks off into a moan when Jongin presses his palm against Joonmyun’s bulge. “ – it’s fun for me. You can’t tell me you didn’t like it at least a little bit.”

“What are you saying,” Jongin sputters, but he can’t stop his whole face from blushing as he thinks about what Joonmyun’s implying.

“Want to try public sex sometime?” Joonmyun suggests, and Jongin groans. He’s signed up for life with a demon who insists on being a menace on his fragile heart. “I know a good place~” His voice takes on a impish lilt.  

“Shut up,” Jongin says, helplessly, and Joonmyun does, but he’s smirking as he stares down at Jongin. He’s so smug, so pleased with himself, and Jongin would be annoyed if this wasn’t what he always wanted for Joonmyun: to open up unashamedly with his real personality and accept love despite the risks he’d encounter. 

He lowers his head to kiss Joonmyun. The brush of their lips against each other is exhilarating after hours of _wanting_ and not _getting,_ and he can tell Joonmyun’s been waiting for this too, with how restless he’s getting. Joonmyun shifts his hips ever so slightly, like he hopes Jongin won’t notice how much he wants it, but Jongin isn’t stupid. 

“You riled yourself up just as much, didn’t you?” he asks, and Joonmyun’s cheeks fill with color. Jongin presses close to Joonmyun so that their bodies are touching in as many places as possible and grinds his clothed cock against Joonmyun’s, eliciting a shaky whimper from Joonmyun.

With his mouth, Jongin maps some nonsensical path from Joonmyun’s neck, to his shoulders, to all over his chest and stomach. Avoiding touching Joonmyun anywhere below the waist with his hands just yet, he focuses on kissing each toned square of Joonmyun’s abs. Every time he sees them is like the first time, confusing and pleasantly… surprising because the intensity of Joonmyun’s muscles don’t match his unpretentious facial features at all.

Off come the slacks, then Joonmyun’s briefs, after Jongin is done admiring the line of Joonmyun’s erection through the damp fabric, and the small wet spot where the head of his dick is leaking. Without the briefs, though, Joonmyun is even more beautiful, and Jongin likes the way the omega lies there pliantly, waiting. It’s permission for Jongin to have his way with him. A sign of trust.

Some alphas like holding down their prey and dictating how the sex is supposed to go with their partners. Jongin likes that, some days, but what he likes more is Joonmyun’s eyes on him, authoritative and affectionate at the same time as he hands Jongin the reins to let him take over.   

“So pretty, so gorgeous,” Jongin mutters, bringing his lips down to the ridges of Joonmyun’s hipbones and dragging a line of saliva across the skin. Joonmyun shifts a little, cock bumping against Jongin’s jawline, making Jongin laugh. So pretty, so gorgeous, but so _impatient._

“Stop _teasing_ ,” the omega says. His voice is scratchy, which means he’s getting cranky because Jongin is circling around the target area!!! but not touching it.

“I’m going to take my time today,” Jongin says, and pins down Joonmyun’s hips before they buck upwards. He observes the way Joonmyun’s darker cock twitches, against his pale stomach. “You don’t have work tomorrow, anyways. Think of it as honeymoon sex.”  

“We’re in your apartment,” Joonmyun says. “It’s not really a honeymoon, is it?”  

“Shush,” Jongin says. “The honeymoon will come later.”

He knows he has extra energy pent up from watching Joonmyun that he needs to get out soon, so he flips Joonmyun over onto his side, moving him closer to the wall.

“Open your thighs a little,” Jongin says. Joonmyun complies, allowing Jongin to fit his cock in between Joonmyun’s legs and just high enough that the tip rubs up against Joonmyun’s balls. Jongin’s leaking enough precum to coat his entire shaft, and he tests the slide with a few slow thrusts to make sure it’s smooth before he starts speeding up.   

Focusing on the friction of Joonmyun’s warm skin and thinking about the fleeting touches he had started to leave on Jongin increasingly often throughout the night makes it easy for Jongin to come quickly. He keeps rolling his hips forward until he’s milked himself dry, then pulls out, leaving a shiny line of slick on the inside of Joonmyun’s thighs.

“What happened to taking your time?” Joonmyun asks cheekily, but he’s just as breathless as Jongin, even if neither of them point it out.

“I didn’t say I was _done_ ,” Jongin says. He is very, very far from being finished with Joonmyun. “Just warming up.”

He moves Joonmyun over so that his cock is trapped between his stomach and the bed, and spreads Joonmyun’s ass apart with his hands. He presses a finger in, experimentally, but pulls away when Joonmyun tries to wiggle around and get it deeper. “Joonmyun.”

“What?” Joonmyun snaps, frustrated.

“Can I try something new?” Jongin asks. He leans in closer. He’s already half hard, just thinking about the noises Joonmyun will make when Jongin gives pleasure to him this way. “You can tell me if you don’t like it, and I’ll stop.” 

Without hesitating, Joonmyun says, “Alright.”   

Jongin makes himself comfortable in between Joonmyun’s thighs, letting his elbows take the burden of his upper body weight by resting them on either side of Joonmyun’s legs.

The warmth of his breath teases Joonmyun’s entrance. He can hear Joonmyun’s heart racing. “Jongin?” His boyfriend’s, _mate’s_ voice is shaky, unsure. “What are you –”

Jongin’s tongue inside him silences Joonmyun momentarily, before he processes what the sensation is and tries to squirm away. Fortunately, Jongin was prepared for this kind of a reaction, which is why his hands are busy holding Joonmyun down by his hips. “Jongin!”

“Do you not like it?” Jongin asks, and then makes an obscenely loud sucking noise, causing Joonmyun to shudder.  

“It’s not that –”

“Do you want me to stop?” Jongin smiles against the puckered skin of Joonmyun’s rim, before giving it another tentative lick.

“It’s _embarrassing_ ,” Joonmyun squeezes out, and Jongin sighs.

“I don’t think that’s going to be an issue,” he says, lifting his head so Joonmyun can hear him more clearly, “because you’re always embarrassing, so…”

“Shut the fuck up. I’m going to un-mate you,” Joonmyun says, but after a pause, he adds, “Don’t… stop. I liked it, even though it’s a little strange.” Jongin can’t see his face from this angle, but he knows Joonmyun is probably flustered out of his mind and blushing profusely, judging from how tomato-toned his ears have gone. A wonderful sight to behold.

“Nice,” Jongin says, as casual as if Joonmyun were complimenting his fondness for frogs, and then he bends back down to resume sucking and licking, invading Joonmyun’s heat until he can’t feel anything except Jongin all over him.

He knows Joonmyun’s getting close to his peak when he starts grinding back on Jongin’s face, and the muscles in his legs can’t seem to choose between flexing and relaxing.  

“Are you gonna come?” Jongin asks, lifting his head, and Joonmyun nods fervently, only to have Jongin roll them over so they’re both lying on their sides. His fingers reach over and form a taut grip around the base of Joonmyun’s cock. He squeezes, briefly, to prevent Joonmyun from coming.

Joonmyun whines in protest, and tries to pull away, but to no avail.

(When they first started having sex, high pitched sounds or whimpering was something he tried to hide, and Jongin had realized it must have been something Seungjun didn’t like. In response, he had communicated, physically and verbally, how much he liked all forms of Joonmyun’s enjoyment being vocalized until Joonmyun no longer held back his voice.)  

“Nuh-uh,” Jongin says with a smirk. “Didn’t I say we would take our time today?”

“I can’t hold on for that much longer,” Joonmyun says, and unleashes his secret weapon. “ _Jonginnie,_ I’m already at my limit.” He bats his eyelashes sweetly.

“I like it when you call me that,” Jongin says, but he doesn’t let go of Joonmyun’s dick. “Will you have energy to go again afterwards if I let you come now?”

“Maybe,” Joonmyun says. He yelps when Jongin tightens his grip. “Yes! Yes! I will!”

“Because if you can’t,” Jongin says. “I’m not going to let you come until I’ve finished what I planned for today.”

“Are you going to make me climb Hallasan?” Joonmyun asks dryly. “If not, I think I can handle whatever it is you want to do.”

“Good,” Jongin says, and unceremoniously nudges fingers into Joonmyun’s entrance while jerking him off with the other hand. He has his chin hooked over Joonmyun’s shoulder, and he kisses Joonmyun on the cheek, sloppily, as Joonmyun curls in on himself, trying to get away from Jongin’s prying, invasive hands even though he’s surrounded on both sides.

With his middle finger, Jongin presses deeper into Joonmyun’s wet heat where he’s learned Joonmyun likes it best, leaving only his third knuckle visible. He pushes with the pad of his finger, insistently, at Joonmyun’s prostate, and Joonmyun’s whole body goes rigid the moment he comes. The white, sticky fluid mostly ends up on his stomach, some of it staining the sheets. A little gets on Jongin’s hand, which Jongin eyes with interest.

Joonmyun happens to look at Jongin when he’s licking the come off his fingers, and he groans in agony. “Oh my _god_ , Jongin, you’re so fucking—”

“Amazing? Sexy? Irresistible?” Jongin asks. “I know, you don’t have to tell me. It’s your own, anyways.” He wipes his hand on Joonmyun’s stomach just to make a point.   

“I’m done,” Joonmyun says, flopping and falling, inevitably, into the wet spot.

“You can’t be done.” Jongin frowns down at his erection, twitching against the small of Joonmyun’s back.

“Give me, like a couple of years to recover,” Joonmyun says, and holds up a hand in defeat. He fights off any attempts on Jongin’s part to reach over and stroke him back to full hardness. “Stop that. Why do you have so much energy?" 

“Because I love you,” Jongin says, kissing the back of Joonmyun’s ear. “Will you ride me, when you stop being such an old man?”

“I’m only _three_ years older than you, Jongin, I swear to—”

Jongin cuts him off with a giggle and three or four hasty _sorry_ ’s until Joonmyun’s temper is tamed again.  

The gradual slide of Joonmyun onto Jongin’s cock is all too much and not enough. Jongin becomes aware of _everything_ ; the sweat on his back starting to cool, the friction of skin rubbing against skin where Joonmyun’s natural lubrication hasn’t covered, Joonmyun’s quiet sigh as he sinks lower before finally bottoming out. He has to bite his lower lip so he can focus more on the sting that the pressure of his own teeth gives him, and less on how Joonmyun’s slippery, overwhelming heat is going to devour every bit of him.  

Joonmyun is meticulous and precise about the way he fucks, but he’s not repetitive. He can be unpredictable. Every time Jongin thinks he’s about to get off from Joonmyun’s accelerating pace, Joonmyun will slow down to an agonizing, almost leisurely pace, rocking against Jongin with a devilish smile. Even so, the rise and fall in frequency of Joonmyun’s bouncing eventually starts to take a toll on him, too, and Jongin notices when Joonmyun starts to lose his composure, shuddering violently despite trying to drag things out to the last possible moment before he has to come.  

When Joonmyun squeezes his walls around Jongin, mouth falling open, Jongin’s mind goes blank.  

“I want to knot you,” Jongin groans, thrusting up at an angle that has Joonmyun whimpering incoherently into his shoulder and clenching around his cock. He can feel the familiar pressure rising, only it’s stronger and a little overwhelming this time. “Can I?”

“Yeah,” Joonmyun says, and Jongin thrusts particularly hard, holding still while his initial release spills into Joonmyun. When he swipes his thumb across the slit of Joonmyun’s cock, Joonmyun arches his back as he comes a second time, mumbling indecipherable words with _Jongin_ shoved in between every other one. His come gets all over Jongin’s hand and stomach, but Jongin doesn’t really mind.

Jongin pulls out quickly and rearranges Joonmyun so that he’s on his hands and knees, his back facing Jongin. He takes a moment to watch the come trickle out of Joonmyun before using his hand to guide his cock, now flushed pink at the crown, back into Joonmyun’s raw entrance.   

He pushes in until he can’t go any further, and hugs Joonmyun tight around the waist, pressing his face to the back of Joonmyun’s neck as his knot starts to swell. The tip locks in place, making Joonmyun whine from discomfort. “I’m sorry,” Jongin says, running soothing hands all over his mate’s arms and shoulders. “Just a little more.” He licks and nibbles at the skin just below Joonmyun’s jaw, to distract him from the uncomfortable stretch.  

Joonmyun’s are trembling from having to support all of his weight, and Jongin pushes at them, making Joonmyun lose his strength and collapse so that he can just lie on the bed. There’s come in between Joonmyun’s back and his stomach, messy and tacky, but Jongin is pleased, because it just means he’s going to smell like Joonmyun for the next week, at the very least.     

He pulls the comforter over both of their bodies, up to their waists. “Sleep,” he tells Joonmyun, as his cock pulses and releases another spurt of come.

“I do what I want,” Joonmyun mumbles, but he’s already dozing off, hand on top of Jongin’s, as his heart beats a content and steady cadence against Jongin’s chest. 

 

+

 

A few days later, Joonmyun asks, “Why is there a picture of me _drooling_ on you in your phone?”

“You looked so peaceful,” Jongin says. “I couldn’t resist.”

“Delete it before I fuck you up,” Joonmyun says, and Jongin obeys his command, without telling Joonmyun he has a backup copy stored in his laptop.  

 

+

 

Over a year has passed since Jongin first met Joonmyun. It’s hard to believe that last November, he was going to art exhibitions with Joonmyun and secretly crushing on the man, unaware that things would turn out so well for both of them in the end.

This November, they’re in Taiwan for a small vacation that Jongin had whisked Joonmyun away on after weeks of an endless string of deadlines for DELIRIUM. The nice thing about Taiwan at this time of year is the milder temperatures compared to Seoul and moderate humidity, which makes travelling and walking around outside a much more pleasant experience.

Although Joonmyun doesn’t know it yet, they’re headed to another exhibition again, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei. It’s been easy for Jongin to keep their destination a secret, since Joonmyun doesn’t really get involved in travelling routes if he doesn’t have to, and as a result, he hasn’t noticed that they took the subway moving in the opposite direction from where Jongin told him they were going.    

They take the first exit and Joonmyun is walking slightly faster than Jongin. He realizes he doesn’t know which direction they’re supposed to be heading in, so he stops and waits for Jongin to catch up.

“Hey, Joonmyun, you wanna guess what material this is?” Jongin pulls lightly on the end of his sweater as he gets closer to Joonmyun. There’s a cheesy grin on his face, and it only grows wider when he sees Joonmyun becoming suspicious towards how giggly he is.

Joonmyun narrows his eyes, reaching over to feel the material between his fingers. “Cashmere-”

“WRONG,” Jongin interrupts, very loudly. He’s raised his voice so much, and so comically, that people stop what they’re doing to look at him and Joonmyun, even if most of them don’t understand Korean. Joonmyun is going to hush him, Jongin can tell, but he barrels on before Joonmyun can do anything about it. “It’s made of the FINEST MATE MATERIAL.”

“Wow.” Joonmyun is momentarily stunned speechless, but then he promptly moves on, asking, “Are we crossing here?” when they reach the intersection.

“Yes,” Jongin says. He holds onto Joonmyun’s elbow so that they don’t get separated in the crowd. The signal light is counting down to when it’ll turn green. “That wasn’t a very fun response.”

“You’ve been throwing more and more bad jokes at me ever since we became mates. I should have seen it coming from a mile away,” Joonmyun says, chuckling at Jongin’s disappointment. “Where _are_ we going?”

“I told you already,” Jongin says. “Food market.”

“I don’t see any food,” Joonmyun says, as he stretches his neck to peer across the street. “We also just had breakfast, like an hour ago?”

“You’re going to get hungry again in 2.5 seconds,” Jongin says, “so don’t worry.”

Joonmyun raises an eyebrow at him. “If you say so.”

“You trust me, right?” Jongin asks. When the signal transitions from the red, stationary man to a green, walking man, he nudges Joonmyun to start walking.

“Somewhat,” Joonmyun says.  “You also managed to hit my head on the bedpost yesterday while I was blindfolded, so I’m starting to have trust issues.” 

Jongin shouldn’t have asked. “I’m _sorry_ ,” he wails, pitifully. He’d just wanted to try something new. It’s not like his goal had been for Joonmyun to end up with an ice pack on his head and no sexy time for either of them.

“Stop pouting,” Joonmyun says, bumping Jongin on the shoulder in a Joonmyun form of a truce. “I was just teasing. I know you wanted to make me happy.”

“I always do,” Jongin says. Joonmyun does his trademark frown-smile where he tries to hide how fond he is of Jongin, and inevitably fails in the end because Jongin is _extremely_ loveable no matter what Sehun says. 

“We’re here,” Jongin announces. He keeps his eyes on Joonmyun, because he didn’t plan this for months beforehand to miss any detail of the much anticipated reaction.

“Where’s the food mar—” Joonmyun’s mouth drops open. “ _Jongin,_ are you serious.”

They’re standing several hundred feet from the entrance to the MOCA, and Joonmyun is staring at the vertical banner hanging at the side of the front entrance.  

 _Exit from the Second Zone (of Paranoia): a Continuation_ with _Lee Hyeongjoo, Kim Sejin, Dalparan, Park Yongseok, Oh Younghoon, Yun Sukmu, Jang Younggyu, Jang Jinyoung, Chung Tehyo, and Cho Eunji_

“I’m _always_ serious,” Jongin says, and Joonmyun laughs hysterically.

“This was an exhibition that wasn’t released to the public, and tickets were sold out within minutes,” Joonmyun says. “How did you…?”

“I pulled a few strings,” Jongin says, smiling when he hears Joonmyun’s heartrate speed up out of excitement.

“Thank you,” Joonmyun says. He sounds like he’s barely holding in a squeal. In the future, Jongin is going to try his best to make Joonmyun look like that as often as he can. “I… this means so much to me.”  

“Anything for you,” Jongin replies. “So, I was right, wasn’t I?”

“About what?” Joonmyun asks, not looking at him as he pulls Jongin towards the entrance so they can walk faster.

“You agree with me, that my sweater,” Jongin starts, when they’ve gone inside, and Joonmyun rolls his eyes before Jongin’s even finished speaking. “…is definitely, absolutely, made of the finest mate material…”

Joonmyun’s not even paying attention to him anymore once they’ve entered the exhibition, which would annoy Jongin if he didn’t know how special it was to Joonmyun. He hangs back from a distance and settles for watching Joonmyun enjoy himself, since that was the whole point of them going to this museum.

“Aren’t you coming?” Joonmyun mouths at him a few seconds later, when he notices Jongin is so far behind him.    

Sheepish, Jongin nods in response and catches up.  

Joonmyun had woken up this morning with bad hair and attempted to cover it up with a black baseball cap, but there’s still a persistent chunk of hair that’s curling up adorably from the back. Jongin reaches over to smooth it down with his fingers, and Joonmyun smiles at him, albeit a little absentmindedly.

There’s no “happily ever after” that truly applies in real life, but Jongin thinks, with his favorite person looking up at him like he’s the sun and stars combined, this is pretty damn close. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> hello, glad you could make it here~~ that was a little bit of a mess, wasn't it? /chuckles  
> some fun things i want to mention if u care to read: 
> 
> -the title of this story is a reference to the first art exhibition jongin and joonmyun go to, The Paranoid Zone, which actually exists except that the time frame for its showing is different!! april 27th, 2016-july 17th, 2016 instead of november.  
> -the one they go to a year later is made up, and the name was an alternate/runner-up title for this entire story~~ however the artists listed are the real artists involved with the first exhibit. :)))  
> -when sehun texts jongin congratulating him about his "low quality" seduction techniques, it is a lighthearted reference to the way seungkwan from 17 squawks "low quality?!!?!?" after vernon tells him his english sucks (you can easily find youtube videos of this)  
> -ik omegas generally bottom during sex...but i live for top!jm so it was satisfying to suggest that they'll switch it up in the future ♥
> 
> thank you so much for reading if you got this far 8) i appreciate it!


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